The Queer Life Amongst Rosie the Riveters
Unsurprisingly, it took a war amongst men to begin the liberation of women.
The beginning of women’s liberation commenced with women tactfully using a hammer and solder, driving automobiles like buses and taxis, handling businesses’ financial accounts, and wearing coveralls or pants. Much like today, some fragile masculinity was threatened, as a number of men refused to work with women during the WWII era. But for the enlightened and fearless few, the men came to be cognizant of the fact that yes, women can indeed skillfully utilize a tool, drive a car, count money, wear pants, and she was damn good at it!
The men who stayed behind from the war and worked with Rosies alleged they could tell if a man or a woman constructed a particular piece of ship because the women were much more precise and thorough with their tasks. Women excelling at “a man’s job” was not just during working hours but also after hours in the bedroom with other women. The Rosies were riveting with queer sex, gender-fluidity, expression, and culture. The men were away, so the queer Rosies could finally play.
The World War II era was a remarkably liberating period for women and teen girls, as families changed and women entered a work force previously held by men. Women were looking for entertainment, work, and companionship as their sons, husbands, and lovers went off to war. Women from all over the country flocked to Richmond, California, a Bay Area city neighboring San Francisco, to become a Rosie.
There, she entered the industrial workforce, earned her own wage, and found companionship and romance that was incomparable. Pursuant to Benes in the book entitled The Sex Effect, for the first time in some of these Rosies’ lives, they heeded to a new word—a word which not only termed the disparity that had prowled clandestinely within her, but also validated there were other women like herself: lesbian.
Thousands of women defense workers and service women moved to the Bay Area to break free from the rural and strictly constructed home ties and shed from heteronormative lovers, and presented themselves with new freedoms where a woman could fully be herself and discover she was not alone. A lesbian woman met her first same-gender lover when she joined the service or joined the war effort by becoming a Rosie. Queer women were taking charge of their lives by making a complete change in how one dresses, works, socializes, and loves in the absence of men; and these women were thriving with validity.
The liberation of women’s nonconforming sex and identity did not cultivate in the Bay Area and throughout other defense plants without a cost. Allying with Canaday in the book entitled The Straight State, homosexuality was deemed perverted, psychopathic, and thus illegal at the time. LGBTQ people, including the queer Rosies, could face dangerous consequences like arrest, expulsion from families, loss of housing and jobs, and direct violence. It was for this purpose of safety the queer women gathered, socialized, and loved in private.
In consonance with the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Park, when the queer Rosies needed to find companionship and community, bars and lounges played a vital role as a safe gathering space. Cocktail bars, lounges, nightclubs, and cafes tailored to queer Rosies, as they were set free to dress in sparkling hues of femininity, masculinity, and androgyny and able to show romantic affection toward each other while basking in entertainment of fabulous and groundbreaking drag queens and kings. Illicit affairs and covert meetings were the only routes for the queer women to feel that things were good, right, and real.
The increase of women companionship, unescorted by men, indubitably expanded the existence of lesbians during the war and post-war America. The unabashed woman, who had the audacity to assert her right to live in public as a lesbian, made it easier for other queer women to find each other and more difficult for the heterosexual community and culture to discount them. It was her state of grace and her worthwhile fight.
Subsequently, as the war ended and the men returned home, the queer women, still under a blatant and treacherous chokehold of heteronormitivity and patriarchy, went back into the closet and held their secret and sacred love for women close to their heart, never to be authentically cherished by another woman again. These indispensable women kept their queer lives and experiences to themselves like an oath. And like any sanctified vow, many of these lesbian stories go untold and undocumented, damaging the archives of queer history.
World War II symbolized an era of extraordinary challenge and change in sexuality, gender norms, and social norms. The war created a space in which queer women could openly exist, recognize each other, and produce a culture all their own. The Rosie the Riveter National Park in Richmond, California is welcoming all queer
stories from all surviving Rosies and family and friends. Rosie the Riveters were an eclectic group of women who shared a diverse experience of Americans on the home front and all female narratives deserve to be amplified in glory for future generations to pay homage for evermore.
