Shirley Willer

1922-1991

Activist

By the time it was all over, Shirley Willer was left with nowhere to go.

In 1962, the 40-year-old Willer moved to New York and joined the Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian group. She eventually became the national president of the organization.

Daughters of Bilitis -- the DOB -- was a low-profile group whose main function was publishing The Ladder, a magazine for lesbian women.

"I couldn't understand why we spent so much time trying to reach out to the lonely little lesbian out in the boondocks with the magazine," Willer said in Making History, a book by Eric Marcus. "I was concerned about the lesbians here in New York."

Some gay and lesbian people attacked DOB because they said the groups didn't represent all gay people.

"They felt we weren't speaking for them, that they weren't having any trouble," she said. "Well, I didn't really think they looked good in all those closets."

While Willer was president of DOB, many lesbian women resented gay men because the men were the ones lurking in the dark giving the community a bad name. And Willer was frustrated with the lack of social action by the Daughters. She was an activist who wanted men and women to work together.

Willer pulled the organization out of an alliance of gay and lesbian groups because the alliance passed resolutions contrary to the official interests of the DOB.

"Ironically, I was the one who had made the motions to pass these resolutions," she said.

Left with no official position in the alliance since her group pulled out and with a sense that her mission was opposed the Daughters' mission, she left the movement. She died of heart failure in 1991.

The conflict in her feelings and her group's position put her out of work. Perhaps Willer thought it's better to be without work and live a life of integrity than to be one who supports her group's decisions over her own.