Strong Women Series #5: Cris Williamson

The Camel and the Scorpion is a book inspired by true events. It is the story of #StrongWomen - Caroline, Lydia, Anna - who spoke out for a good world despite the personal and professional risks to themselves in doing so.

This post is the fifth in my Strong Women Series. The series honors women and girls of courage.

Cris Williamson. Source: Freight & Salvage.

Never heard of Cris Williamson?

A singer and songwriter, Ms. Williamson's album, "The Changer And The Changed, was the all-time best selling independent record from the early 70s until the early 90s - the same time period that King's Tapestry was the best selling record by a female solo artist." (Source: warr.org)


In an interview with the San Francisco Examiner, January 2015, Ms. Williamson said:
"We are given a voice at birth, we sort of open our beak like a little bird ... People go, 'Where did you get that voice?' And I think about it. I didn't get it anywhere. It pretty much came with the package. My thing was: ‘Now, what am I going to do with that gift?’"


So Cris Williamson had a remarkable voice, a gift as a songwriter, and the chutzpah to found several record labels over the years. But why is she one of my #StrongWomen heroines?

Again, from warr.org: ".... Williamson didn't get even 1% of the media attention of .... other artists, mostly because she was an out lesbian before Melissa Etheridge, Phranc, or even Martina Navratilova - she was the biggest lesbian star in an era when lesbianism had zero mainstream visibility."

In a 2009 interview with Berklee, Ms. Williamson answered a question about being a role model for young musicians who are lesbians. Ms. Williamson replied: " .... my approach to music is to speak as though we were all creatures who come to a water hole, in a clearing, in the wilderness. And everybody deserves the water, and the water to me is music. And that's what brings us all human beings together. And I think music should bring people together and not drag them apart."

Ms. Williamson answered the interviewer's question in the context of mentoring musicians, but this phrase within her response is what spoke to me of a vision, a source of courage:

....  we [are] all creatures who come to a water hole, in a clearing, in the wilderness. And everybody deserves the water ... 

If Ms. Williamson had concealed her sexual orientation and feminism, we might all know her as well as we know some of her contemporaries: Carole King, James Taylor, Carly Simon, and Joni Mitchell.

In choosing to come out as a lesbian and as a feminist in the 1970s, Ms. Williamson's musical voice gave heart to legions of girls and women who shrouded a part of their true selves in secrecy.

Women of courage like Cris Williamson? They are who kept me writing The Camel and the Scorpion for 20 years, so I could share the stories of women like The Camel and the Scorpion protagonists, Caroline, Lydia, and Anna.

Honorable, imperfect, brave, vulnerable champions, all of them. Risking their personal and professional lives to stand up for their ideals.