Content warning: This article contains mentions of rape crisis centers and other mentions of sexual assault, including police response to crimes.
CSUS professor. Author. Owner of Sacramento’s feminist bookstore for two decades. Activist. Educator and research coordinator for the Sacramento Rape Crisis Center. Current caretaker of seventeen cats.
Have you heard of her?
There are endless ways to describe Theresa Corrigan (born 1949), and no one title could ever encapsulate her work.
A Non-Comprehensive List of Things Theresa Corrigan Has Done:
- Taught Women’s Studies courses at CSUS for over two decades
- Owned and operated a feminist bookstore named The Lioness in Sacramento for two decades
- President of the Feminist Bookstore Network for twelve years
- Was a judge for the Lambda Literary Awards for several years (1990-1992)
- Hundreds of speaking engagements, including workshops titled The Invisible Employee, The Invisible Student, and Everything You Want to Know About Homosexuality, But Didn’t Have Anyone To Ask
- Co-edited anthologies
- Organized to fight harmful police procedures for rape survivors
- Worked as a coordinator and liaison for the Sacramento Rape Crisis Center
- And so much more…
Theresa Corrigan taught Women’s Studies classes at CSUS from 1974 to 2003, although her original degree and first professor position was in English language and literature. So how did she come to the Women’s Studies Department? In an interview earlier this year, Corrigan explains:
Some of the students that I knew who were friends of mine came to me and said, “Will you teach this class?” I said, “No, I don’t really want to have anything to do with women’s studies.” They said, “Please.” And that was my first real encounter with women’s studies.
And I found the particular women that I was dealing with to be pretty damn homophobic. One of the members of the Women’s Studies board come to me and said, “The vice president of the University wants you to sign a document promising that you won’t seduce any of your female students, and we’d like you to do that.” I said, “I’m not going to do that. Tell him that when every man on this campus signs that document, then I’ll think about it.” Anyway, so I fought. The first semester that I taught that course, they wouldn’t allow me to teach it by myself. I had to have somebody else in the room with me to make sure that I didn’t do anything. And this was Women’s Studies; this was not the University.
So, they brought in a student assistant who did no work at all on it. I did the whole course, but she was sat there and watched me. She got paid, the students got credit. I didn’t get a dime. I did it all. I volunteered to keep the course around, changed the course name from Lesbianism and Feminism to Society of Women because a number of the students said they really wanted to take the course, but they couldn’t afford to have that word on their transcript, So I changed it to Society of Women, and I broadened the scope of it because I was interested in more than just lesbian relationships.
Interviewed by Judy Waxman, March 2022; Transcript from the Veteran Feminists of America Pioneer Histories Project. https://veteranfeministsofamerica.org/vfa-pioneer-histories-project-theresa-corrigan/
Corrigan has been quite candid about the prejudice and double standards she faced as a lesbian professor. But she also faced challenges as the owner of a self-proclaimed “feminist bookstore.”
From 1980 to 2000, I owned and operated Lioness Books, which was the feminist bookstore in Sacramento. It was one of the oldest and largest bookstores in the country. I finally closed it down in 2000 because I was just hemorrhaging money. The chain stores. That was before Amazon had really grown, but the chain stores were putting us out of business.
Interviewed by Judy Waxman, March 2022; Transcript from the Veteran Feminists of America Pioneer Histories Project. https://veteranfeministsofamerica.org/vfa-pioneer-histories-project-theresa-corrigan/
In the two decades it was open, the bookstore was a haven for readers looking for books they couldn’t find anywhere else. The Lioness held poetry readings, book signings, and various community gatherings. Theresa Corrigan stocked unique and eclectic books….though visitors couldn’t always remember the titles! Here is one of Corrigan’s contributions to an edition of Feminist Bookstore News:
Do you know which books these customers could possibly be talking about? Answers at the end of this article!
Unfortunately, Corrigan’s work wasn’t always as fun as tracking down misremembered titles of feminist books. Corrigan was part of the coalition that created and operated the Sacramento Rape Crisis Center, which opened in 1974. She and the other staff members worked long hours to help survivors, but not everyone appreciated their work.
The following picture features an article originally from a 1977 edition of The Sacramento Bee:
In the above article, sheriff’s detective Carol Daly is quoted: “It’s not just the question of counseling; there’s the issue of lesbianism in dealing with them. What kind of counseling is a woman going to get there?”
Theresa Corrigan, along with Center director Kate Guzman, responded that their counselors are trained, and “lifestyle” doesn’t affect the counseling. “[Guzman and Corrigan] like to think that training outweighs any objection to a counselor’s sexual preference.”
The staff members also fought for the safety and comfort of their clients, including requiring that post-assault interviews happen in private and not in open public spaces, as they had been conducted previously. Corrigan worked as a consultant for the National Institute of Mental Health for their rape prevention and education program as well, and she was able to advocate against several concerning proposals she felt would harm survivors.
This article covers only a fraction of the work that Theresa has done over the last seven decades: work to fight for equality and diversity in education, for safety of survivors, and for marginalized communities to have spaces where they could see themselves represented.
One thing’s for sure, though: Sacramento is lucky to have this woman fighting for its people – a woman with the heart of a lioness.
There’s more to every story, especially this one. See the 2022 interview for more information about Theresa Corrigan’s life and work:
VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT: THERESA CORRIGAN
The Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony also holds a recording of a 1990 interview with Theresa Corrigan during her book tour:
https://www.alotarchives.org/interview/theresa?redirected=true
Corrigan has also contributed to many issues of Feminist Bookstore News, mostly from 1988-1994. You can also find her co-edited anthology, With a Fly’s Eye, Whale’s Wit and Woman’s Heart,here:
The answers to Find That Book!:
