Who’s the Barbarian?, (13 October 1979) Washington, D.C.

“Who’s the Barbarian?” delivered October 13, 1979, Loy, Tana. (dates of birth and death are unknown)

The audiotape of Tana Loy’s speech (=A) was published in The Velvet Sledgehammer, a radio show produced by Donna Allegra. Loy’s complete speech appears in the June 30, 1982, episode. Pacifica Radio Archives digitally preserves The Velvet Sledgehammer as part of their American Women Making History and Culture: 1963-1982 grant preservation project sponsored by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission at the National Archives and Records Administration. The episode is available online and Loy’s speech starts around 26:39 minutes: https://archive.org/details/pacifica_radio_archives-IZ1082.

A written version of this speech (=B) was published in Tana Loy, “Who’s the Barbarian?” in “Third World Lesbians and Gays Meet,” volume 6 of Gay Insurgent: A Gay Left Journal, ed. Daniel Tsang (Philadelphia, PA: Lavender Archives, 1980), 15.

Copy-text B was located with the help of Daniel Tsang, a Distinguished Librarian at the University of California Irvine and journalist who documented the first National Conference of Third World Lesbian and Gays. Tsang founded Gay Insurgent and published the article, “Third World Lesbians and Gays Meet,” which included Loy’s speech.

Other versions of this speech appear online, but the copy provided here was directly transcribed from the complete audiotape and does not paraphrase, omit, or re-arrange Loy’s spoken words.

The transcription remains faithful to Loy’s words on the audiotape (=A) in order to best preserve her voice and diction. Copy-text B was used for paragraph structure and paragraph numbers were added in brackets. Copy-text B was also used for the speech heading, punctuation and use of italics, and grammar.

In one instance, copy-text B was used to fill in Loy’s words where the audiotape skipped. At the end of paragraph 3, copy-text B was used to add the phrase, “Who’s the barbarian?” in place of where the audiotape was corrupted.

The text presented here has been thoroughly checked and proofread for accuracy.