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The "women's" festivals that wanted songs with the L word lost a LOT of women and a lot of support for women's issues.

Fink & Marxer got it right. Since they shared a stage with John McCutcheon at Georgetown in the 1980s, I have never actually wanted to know about their sex lives. I've thought they're real folk musicians, not sellouts, I respect that and I like some of their songs. I don't care if they're a couple, if both are coupled to other people, or whatever else, as long as they're not trying to sell the idea that "women's" means "lesbians'" and Real Feminists Treat Other Women As Sex Objects Just As Men Do. Betty Friedan said tolerance for that idea would kill NOW...and it just about did.

There was this tragic lack of support, in the 1980s, for the idea of sisterspace being a space for women who were *off* heat and wanted to think about more interesting things, for a change.

So now I'd like to say that *because* Fink & Marxer weren't the ones objectifying women right in the "women's" events, I remember them fondly and think it's grand that they've stayed together all these years. They have to know that that's how women buying their children's songs felt...I hope they feel encouraged by seeing it in writing.

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