Naked in the Promised Land

¶ … Naked in the Promised Land by Lillian Faderman [...]'s relationship to men, straight and gay, along with men's influence in her life. Faderman's life has been highly influenced by the men in her life, from her absent father to the men who propositioned her for sex when she was only thirteen. She grew up at a time when women could not aspire to many careers, and she made money any way she could by modeling and stripping. She used her body to please men, and always wanted to please them, but ultimately discovered she had to please herself to truly grow as a person and a woman.

It is clear many men influence Faderman's life as this memoir unfolds. Some of them simply want to use her and abuse her, or make money from her looks. Others want to help her, like the counselor Maury, who sets her on the right path back to school and college. Still others ignore her, like her father, who never even acknowledged her throughout his relationship with her mother. Even her stepfather influences her, because he makes her mother "sane" for the first time in years, and takes some of the pressure off Lillian to succeed. Each man in her life is weak and flawed however, from the photographers who take advantage of her, to the gay psychiatrist she marries to "please" her mother and convince her family she is "normal." Every time she encounters one of these weak men, something goes wrong with her life. It is only when she acknowledges who she really is, and embarks on a successful lesbian relationship that she is able to overcome adversity and make a great life for herself.

Maury was perhaps the most influential man in her life, because he encouraged her, allowed her to be just who she was, and got her back on the path to education. However, there were others in her life that influenced her too, from her gay psychologist husband to her son, and even the young professors at UCLA who allowed her to teach as a graduate student, but then gave all the jobs to male grad students as they graduated. Each of the men in her life influenced how she turned out and who she became, but clearly some had much more influence over her than others did. He gave her a great gift when he told her she could do anything. He says, "Yeah, so you're right, there aren't a lot of women doing big things. But so what? There's nothing they can't do, it's just more of a struggle for them to do it" (Faderman 171). Maury is about the only man in the book with a positive role, and his influence is immeasurable. Faderman was influenced by many things, including her experiences with her mother's madness, but the most important may have been Maury's influence that supported her and gave her the feeling she could do anything, and overcome anything - even working as a nude model and stripper.

It is ironic that Faderman knew she was a lesbian at a young age, but still performed naked to please men who wanted her sexually. She learned from a young age that men were predatory, as she notes fairly early in the book. She writes, "A girl alone in the world is like a rabbit chased by a pack of hungry coyotes" (Faderman 129). However, later she notes the predators can really be either sex, especially when it comes to sex and sexuality. Because she had a fantastic body, some of her female lovers abused her and used her too, and in fact, it was her first lover, "Jan" that said she had a body good enough to model with and earn money.

It must be remembered that Faderman had few choices as a young girl growing up in the 1950s, especially if she was gay. Maury the counselor told her if she was not going to marry, she was going to have to work, so she needed an education, so the attitude was still that a woman's real career option was to marry and have children. Feminist author Monique Wittig writes, "Lesbians should always remember and acknowledge how 'unnatural,' compelling, totally oppressive, and destructive being "woman" was for us in the old days before the women's liberation movement" (Wittig 555). Thus, Faderman did not have that many options open to her to get what she wanted, and choosing to use her body may have been the most logical option for the time.

It is extremely brave of her to share that time in her life when she has risen to a position of power in the California educational system, and brave of her to share the photos in the book, as well. She literally lays herself bare for criticism, but in fact, she is an inspiration for other feminists, because she clearly illustrates that women are not their bodies, they are much, much more, as her adult life clearly shows.

However, the many women in her life influence Faderman, as well. While she works as a stripper to put herself through college and support her obsessive-compulsive lover, her lover berates her for her job. She says, "The Cornell professor found that all the women in his study came from the lower socioeconomic classes and were rejected by their fathers" (Faderman 257). Thus, her mother turned on her when she found she was posing nude, her lover berated her for her job, and her aunt only wants her to find a good "Jewish prince," even though Lillian knows by the age of sixteen she much prefers women to men. Women influenced how she felt about herself and her sexuality, while men influenced her in far deeper ways.