Celebrating the "Feminist-As-Lesbian": Jeri Dawn Wine (Reflections/Reflexions‪)‬

When Jeri Wine was chair of the Department of Applied Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in the 1980s, the name-plate on her office door stated unequivocally, Jeri Wine, Chairwoman. This was at a time when many feminists, particularly liberal feminists, saw gender-neutral language as a key concern for the women's movement. Instead of gender-biased terms like policeman, or gendered words like policewoman, chairperson and police officer were the preferred terms. Jeri's designation of chairwoman served as a reminder to a predominantly male department and a university where men held most of the administrative posts, that this department was chaired by a woman. And this chairwoman was both feminist and openly lesbian, a particularly rare combination in the 1980s.