Top Quotes: “Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America” — Lillian Faderman

Introduction

“Around the turn of the last century, middle-class women in large numbers were able to support themselves independently for the first time in our history. The theories of the sexologists filtered into popular consciousness, not coincidentally at about the same time that many jobs that had earlier been closed to women were opening up. I argue that the sexologists’ theories helped to erode relationships that now threatened to be permanent and thus more ‘serious’ than earlier romantic friendships, which had to give way to marriage when women had no means of support.”

Romantic Friendships

“In 1843 author William Bryant wrote an essay for the Evening Post in which he glowingly described a trip to Vermont, where, among nature’s beauties, he had the opportunity to observe a beautiful ‘female friendship’ between two revered ‘maiden ladies.’ Bryant wasn’t alone in his boundless admiration for the pair and the peaceful and loving relationship they established together, as he said when he gave their history:

In their youthful days, they took each other as companions for life, and this union, no less sacred to them than the tie of marriage, has subsisted, in uninterrupted harmony, for 40 years, during which they’ve shared each others’ occupations and pleasures and works of charity while in health, and watched over each other tenderly in sickness…They slept on the same pillow and had a common purse, and adopted each others reactions, and…I would tell you of their dwelling, encircled with roses…and I would speak of the friendly attentions which their neighbors, people of kind hearts and simple manners, seem to take pleasure in bestowing upon them.

If such a description of love between 2 women had been published in an American paper a century later, surely the editor’s desk would’ve been piled high with correspondence about immorality in Vermont (slept on the same pillow!) and the 2 women in question would’ve felt constrained to sue Bryant for defamation of character in order to clear their good names. In 1843, however, the 2 ladies were flattered and the newspaper’s readers were charmed.”

“More than any other phenomenon, education may be said to have been responsible for the spread among middle-class women of what eventually came to be called lesbianism. Not only did it bring them together in large numbers within the women’s colleges, but it also permitted them literally to invent new careers such as settlement house work and various kinds of betterment professions in which they could be gainfully and productively employed and to create all-female societies around those professions.”

“By 1840, 40,000 women, over 1/3 of the higher education student population in America, were enrolled in colleges and universities and there were 153 American colleges that they could attend.”

“Females who attended college were far less likely to marry than their uneducated counterparts. While only 10% of American women in general remained single between 1880–1900, about 50% of American college women remained single. 57% of the Smith graduating class of 1884, at the height of women’s excitement over their new-found opportunities in education and the professions, never married. Marriage stats for Vassar and Mt. Holyoke were similar. Many of the most successful alumnae of that era were ‘spinsters.’

Undoubtedly some of them never married because most men in that era feared educated females and would not dare take them as wives. But others never married because they preferred to continue what they discovered in their women’s colleges — relationships with ‘kindred spirits,’ other women who were interested in following the same dreams, with whom they thought it was far more possible to have a loving connection of equals than it was with a man. Many of those women paired with other female college grads to establish same-sex households — ‘Boston marriages,’ as they were sometimes called in the East where they were so common. Whether or not those relationships were usually sexual cannot be definitively known, but they were often clearly love relationships.”

In fantastic contrast to the situation that prevailed on American campuses in the middle of the 20th century, in the 19th, it was far better socially for a woman to have been a lover of women.”

“Perhaps the most important element in encouraging young college women in their escape from domesticity was a new form of what had been termed romantic friendship, which came to be called in college life ‘smashes,’ ‘crushes,’ and ‘spoons.’ These passions were even described in an 1873 Yale student newspaper, obviously without any awareness that relationships of that nature might have sexual undertones, or that elements of them were already being seen as ‘inversions’ by some European sexologists. ‘When a Vassar girl takes a shine to another,’ the Yalie observed, ‘she straightaway enters upon a regular course of bouquet sendings, interspersed with tinted notes, mysterious packages of ‘Ridley’s Mixed Candies,’ locks of hair perhaps, and many other tender tokens, until at last the object of her attentions is captured, the 2 women became inseparable, and the aggressor is considered by her circle of acquaintances as — smashed.’

Such mores and passions in women’s colleges didn’t die with the end of the century. Romantic all-women dances were held in the early 20th century by colleges such as Vassar and Smith, as described by Cosmopolitan in a 1901 article entitled ‘A Girl’s College Life,’ where the writer observed that the older student generally played ‘the cavalier’ for the younger student:

She sends her flowers, calls for her, fills her order of dance…takes her to supper, sees her partner home…And if the freshman has made the desired hit, there are dates for future meetings and jollifications and a good night over the balusters, as lingering and cordial as any the freshman has left behind.”

“Jane Addams found her family’s efforts to launch her as a debutante and marry her to her stepbrother extremely distasteful. Those attempts, Addams recalled in her autobiography, led to ‘the nadir of my nervous depression and sense of maladjustment,’ from which she was extricated by Ellen Starr, whom she met in college. Ellen appears to have been Jane’s first serious attachment. For years they celebrated September 11 — even when they were apart — as the anniversary of their first meeting. During their separations Jane stationed Ellen’s picture, as she wrote her, ‘where I can see you almost every minute.’ It was Ellen who prodded Jane to leave her family, come to Chicago, and open Hull House together with her. On accepting the plan Jane wrote Ellen: ‘Let’s love each other through thick and thin and work out a salvation’ It was Ellen’s devotion and emotional support that permitted Jane to cast off the self-doubts that had been plaguing her as a female who wanted to be both socially useful and independent during unsympathetic times and to commit herself to action: to create a settlement house in the midst of poverty where young, comfortably brought-up women who’d spent years in study might now ‘learn of life from life itself,’ as Addams later wrote. Under the guidance initially of both Addams and Starr these females of the leisure class investigated sweatshops and the dangerous trades and agitated for social reforms, helped newly arrived immigrants learn to make America their home, taught skills, and promoted cultural activities. They changed the lives of the poor and were themselves changed by their confrontation with realities from which they’d always been sheltered.”

“Although it was known that Jane and wealthy philanthropist Mary Rozet Smith, who later became her ‘devoted companion’ (as biographers must acknowledge), always slept in the same room and the same bed, and when they traveled Jane even wired ahead to be sure they would get a room with a double bed, nevertheless most historians have preferred to present Addams as asseexual.”

“Although Ellen Starr continued to work alongside Jane and to live at Hull House for many years, the early intensity of their relationship dwindled, and Mary Rozet Smith replaced Ellen in Jane’s affections. Jane’s relationship with Mary lasted 40 years. Mary first came to Hull House in 1890 as another wealthy young lady anxious to make herself useful. In the initial correspondence between Jane and Mary, Jane always brought in Ellen, using the first person plural, writing, for example, ‘We will miss you.’ But soon Ellen dropped out of the letters, and by 1893 Mary became a traveling companion on Jane’s lecture tours.”

“Mary wrote Jane: ‘You can never know what it is to me to have had you and to have you now.’ Jane addressed her ‘My Ever Dear’ and wrote: ‘I miss you dreadfully and am yours ’til death.’ They thought of themselves as wedded. In a 1902 letter, written during a 3-week separation, Jane remarked: ‘You must know, dear, how I long for you all the time, and especially during the last 3 weeks. There’s reason in the habit of married folks keeping together.’ In 1904 they purchased a home together near Bar Harbor, ME. ‘Our house — it quite gives me a thrill to write the word,’ Jane told Mary. ‘It was our house wasn’t it in a really truly ownership,’ and she talked about their ‘healing domesticity.’”

“Mary Garrett, a millionaire philanthropist, had fallen in love with Carey and promised the Bryn Mawr trustees she would donate a fortune to the college if they would promote Carey Thomas to president. They did so in 1894, when Carey was 37. Upon Mamie’s departure Mary moved in with Cary on the Bryn Mawr campus and the 2 shared a home until Mary Garrett’s death in 1915.

Together, with the help of Mary’s fortune, they promoted wildly controversial feminist causes such as endowing Johns Hopkins with a med school under the stipulation that women be admitted on an equal footing with men. There can be no doubt that the relationship was what M. Carey Thomas had dreamed of as a girl: one between 2 women who loved each other and had great work to pursue. She acknowledged Mary as the source of her ‘greatest happiness’ and the one who was responsible for her ‘ability to do work.’ Nor was the fleshy aspect missing, as Carey wrote to her ‘lover’: ‘A word or photo does all, and the pulse beats and heart longs in the same old way.’”

“Kinsey’s stats show that 12% of the women of his sample who were born in the 19th century had lesbian contacts to orgasm. While many turn-of-the-century women may’ve been stopped by the strictures of their times from exploring sexuality, there were a few who knew they were sexual beings regardless of the strictures and didn’t let themselves be affected by them. Extant letters sometimes reveal an unmistakable sexual relationship between pairs of women. One remarkable set of such letters is that of Rose Elizabeth Cleveland and Evangeline Mars Simpson Whipple. Rose was the sister of Pres. Grover Cleveland, who was unmarried during his first 2 years in office. Rose lived with him in the White House at that time and took over the hostess duties of the First Lady. She later became principal of the Collegiate Institute of Lafayette, IN, a writer and lecturer, and editor of Chicago magazine Literary Life. When was 44 she met a wealthy 30-year-old widow, Evangeline Simpson. Their passionate correspondence began in 1890. For example:

Oh, darling, come to me this night — my Clevy, my Viking, my Everything — Come!

— Evangeline to Rose

Ah, Eve, Eve, surely you cannot realize what you are to me — What you must be. Yes, I dare it now — I will no longer fear to claim you — you are mine by everything in earth and heaven — by every sign in soul and spirit and body…Give me every joy and all hope. This is yours to do.

— Rose to Evangeline

The letters became more specifically erotic as the relationship progressed. In one, Rose remembers with delight the times when

my Eve looks into my eyes with brief bright glances, with long rapturous embrances — when her sweet life beneath and her warm enfolding arms appease my hunger, and quiet my [illegible] and carry my body to the summit of joy, the end of search, the goal of love!

“After their return Almeda wrote her again, recalling Emma taking her in her arms and ‘your beautiful throat that I kissed with reverent tenderness…And your bosom — ah, your sweet bosom, unconfined.’ Their erotic relationship was apparently culminated, as still antoher letter from Almeda suggests.

Dearest…If I had only had courage enuf to kill myself when you reached the climax then — then I would’ve known happiness, for at that moment I had complete possessinon of you. Now you see the yearning I’m possessed with — the yearning to possess you at all times and it’s impossible. What greater suffering can there be — what greater heaven — what greater hell? And how the will to live sticks in me when I wish to live after possessing you. Satisfied? Ah, God, no! At this moment I’m listening to the rhythm of the pulse coming thru your throat. I am surg[ing] along with your life blood, coursing thru the secret places of your body.

I wish to escape from you but I’m harried from place to place in my thots. I cannot escape from the rhythmic spurt of your love juice.

But women didn’t necessarily perceive themselves as lesbians simply because they lived such experiences and wrote and received such letters. Some even dismissed entirely the significance of those experiences in identifying their sexual orientation. Several years after Emma Goldman’s relationship with Alemda Sperry, in 1928, the same year the famous lesbian novel The Wall of Loneliness was published, Goldman wrote of her shock that a woman friend had run off with Djuna Barnes: ‘Really, the Lesbians are a crazy lot. Their antagonism to the male is almost a disease with them. I simply can’t bear such narrowness.’ Although she had held another woman to her ‘unconfined bosom’ and shared her ‘love juice’ with her, Goldman didn’t hate men, so she felt she wasn’t ‘one of them.’”

Working-Class Women

“Women in penal institutions during the late 19th and early 20th centuries seem also to have engaged in some form of romantic friendships. The early 20th-century psychologist Margaret Otis described such passionate but apparently largely nonsexual relationships between black and white women in reform schools. Otis claimed that those relationships occurred only along cross-racial lines, ‘the difference in color…tak[ing] the place of difference in sex’ and the black women generally playing the ‘man’s role.’ But since the black and white women were physically segregated in the institutions Otis observed, the relationships usually could have no consummation outside of romantic notes passed surreptitiously between the women and quick utterances of endearment and high sentiments — which would have rendered those affections as emotionally intense and ungenital as most romantic friendships probably were. Had the women not been segregated, however, the nature of the relationships might’ve been quite different.”

“The situation of working-class women wasn’t to change much until the end of the century. The jobs that were open to them — usually of a domestic nature or in a factory — offered little beyond bare subsistence and no vistas of opportunity such as women from wealthier families were beginning to enjoy. It appeared to a good number of them that had they at least been men, life would’ve been more fair. Wages would’ve been higher for work that was not more difficult, and they would’ve been socially freer to engage in activities such as travel. There were good reasons for them to envy the privileges that males even of their class enjoyed and that were far above what was available to any female.

Most of them suffered in silence. But a few were more active in their resentment, and the most adventurous or the most desperate of them even formulated an ingenious solution to their plight. They figured out that if they moved to an area where they weren’t known, cut their hair, and wore men’s clothes, their potential in terms of meaningful adventure and finances would increase tremendously. They often saw themselves not as men trapped in women’s bodies, as sexologists suggested they were, but rather as women in masquerade, trying to get more freedom and decent wages. Their aims weren’t unlike those that any feminist would applaud today.

They had few problems with detection. It was relatively easy for women to pass as men in earlier times because, unlike in the latter half of the 20th century, women never wore pants. A person in pants would’ve been assumed to be male, and only the most suspicious would’ve scrutinized facial features or body movements to discern a woman beneath the external appearance.

Obviously there were more working-class women who were disgruntled with their limitations as females but simply eschewed feminine behavior in mild protest than who actually chose to become transvestites or try to pass as men, but the number of the latter was sizable. One researcher has estimated through Union Army doctors’ accounts that at least 400 women transvestites fought in the Civil War. Many continued as transvestites even into the 20th century.”

“One can safely guess that transvestism and attempts to pass were not so rare and that there must’ve been thousands of women wandering around America in the latter part of the 19th century and the early 20th who were passing as men.

Most of these working-class women appear to have begun their ‘masculine’ careers not because they had an overwhelming passion for another woman and wanted to be a man to her, but rather because of economic necessity or a desire for adventure beyond the narrow limits that they could enjoy as women. But once the sexologists became aware of them, they often took such women or those who showed any discontent whatsoever with their sex roles for their newly conceptualized model of the invert, since they had little difficulty believing in the sexuality of women of that class, and they assumed that a masculine looking creature must also have a masculine sex instinct.”

“A transvestite woman who could actually pass as a man had male privileges and could do all manner of things other women could not: open a bank account, write checks, own property, go anywhere unaccompanied, vote in elections.”

“Women of the working class whose masculinity was most apparent came to be seen by the early sexologists as the prime example of the lesbian, whether or not those women had sexual relations with other females. And conversely, women who were passionately in love with other females but didn’t appear to be masculine were considered for some years more as merely romantic friends or devoted companions.”

Sexology

“Perhaps the sexual possibilities of romantic friendship among middle-class women were overlooked by outside observers throughout much of 19th-century America because ‘illicit’ sexuality in general was uncommon then (compared to earlier and later eras), judging at least from the birthrate of children born prior to the ninth month of marriage. During the Revolutionary era, for example, 33% of all first children were born before the ninth month of marriage. In Victorian America, between 1841 and 1880, only 13% of all first births were before the ninth month of marriage. If unmarried women, especially those of the ‘better classes,’ appeared to be by and large inactive in terms of heterosexual relations, it was probably difficult to conceive of them [as being homosexuals].”

“The ‘normal’ female’s sexuality was supposed to be available for procreation and her husband’s conjugal pleasure only. But if a female were not a female at all but a man trapped in a woman’s body, it shouldn’t be condemnable nor surprising that her sexuality would assert itself as would a man’s. Newton suggests that for decades the female invert was alone among women in her privilege of being avowedly sexual. Frances Wilder is an example of a woman who took that privilege. In a letter she wrote in 1915 to Edward Carpenter, a leading promoter of the congenital theory, she confessed that she harbored a ‘strong desire to caress and fondle’ another female. Hoping to justify her sex drive, she explained that she experienced such a desire because she had within her not just ‘a dash of masculine’ but also a ‘masculine mind.’

Such defenses, which attributed sexual difference to nature, also meant that those who identified themselves as homosexual could, for the first time, speak out against legal and social persecution. Lesbians (as women) were generally seen as being beneath the law and therefore ignored, with a few rare exceptions. But homosexual men and the lesbians who identified with their struggle through such groups as the German Scientific Humanitarian Committee used the congenital inversion theory to challenge legal sanctions against sodomy: the law and society had no business persecuting homosexuals, since their behavior was normal for them. And there was no reason for social concern about homosexual seduction, since someone who wasn’t a congenital invert couldn’t be seduced by a person of the same sex.

It was, in fact, much better to be a congenital invert than one who had the option of being heterosexual and chose homosexuality out of free will. Such a conscious choice in those unexistential times was an offense to society. As one doctor observed in 1906, ‘If the abnormality is congenital, clearly it cannot be a crime. If it be acquired it may be both vicious and criminal.’ For many, to claim a birth defect was preferable to admitting to willful perversity.

The spread of the congenital theory also informed many who loved the same sex that there were others like them. That info carried with it potential political and personal benefits that would have been impossible earlier. First in Europe and later in America, it encouraged those who wished to define themselves as homosexuals to organize publicly. The sexologists virtually gave them not only an identity and vocabulary to describe themselves, but also an armor of moral innocence. Once they knew there was a sizable minority like them, they could start looking for each other.

Already by 1890 some female ‘inverts’ had joined the sexual underworld of big cities such as NY, where, along with male ‘inverts’ in evening gowns, they attended balls at places such as Valhalla Hall in the Bowery, wearing tuxedos and waltzing with other more feminine-looking women. The women who attended such functions were perhaps the first conscious ‘butches’ and ‘femmes.’ There could be no such social equivalents for women who loved women before the sexologists turned their attention to them, since earlier they had had no awareness of themselves as a group. In effect, the sexologists gave many of them a concept and a descriptive vocabulary for themselves, which was as necessary in forming a lesbian subculture as the modicum of economic independence they were able to attain at about the same time in history. Historian George Chauncey points out with regard to male homosexuals that the sexologists were merely ‘investigating an [existing] subculture rather than creating one’ through their formulations of sexual inversion. And, indeed, there’s good evidence to suggest that homosexual male subcultures have been in existence at least since the beginning of the 18th century. But for women who loved women the situation was somewhat different, since economic dependency on marriage had made it impossible for them to form such a subculture as early as male homosexuals did. The sexologists, emerging just as women’s economic position was beginning to change, provided the crucial concept of sexual type — the female invert — for women who in earlier times could’ve seen themselves only as romantic friends or isolated women who passed as men. If the sexologists didn’t create a lesbian subculture, they certainly were the midwives to it.”

“Some women who loved women were happy about the sexologists’ explanations of the etiology of their ‘problem.’ Perhaps those theories even seemed accurate to women who desired to be active, strong, ambitious, and aggressive and to enjoy physical relationships with other women since their society adamantly defined all those attributes as male, they internalized that definition and did indeed think of themselves as having been born men trapped in women’s bodies. For many of them, the image of their masculinity was an integral part of their sexual relationships and they became ‘butches’ in the working class and young lesbian subcultures, especially during the 50s. If the only cultural models they saw of lovers of women were male, it isn’t unlikely that they might have pictured themselves as male when making love to a woman, just as the sexologists suggested.”

Rebellion & Experimentation in the 20s

“Although there were no huge numbers of women who suddenly identified as lesbians, stats gathered by a 20s sociologist indicate that many women were giving themselves permission to explore sex between women. Davis’ study of 2200 (primarily middle class) females shows that 50% admitted to intense emotional relations with other women and half of that number said that those experiences were either ‘accompanied by sex or recognized as sexual in character.’ They frequently saw the relationship as an isolated experience (or one of several isolated experiences), and they expected eventually to marry and live as heterosexuals, though the times seemed to some of them to permit experimentation.

The etiology of ‘lesbian chic,’ the bisexual experimentation of the 20s, has been traced by some social critics to WWI. But the war, in which the US was engaged for only 2 years, didn’t have so significant an effect in establishing a lesbian subculture in America as it seems to have had in some areas of Europe, where it was fought for 5 years and with much more female participation than American women were permitted.”

“It wasn’t until WWII, in which American women participated on a much larger scale, that their war effort experiences actually did stimulate an unprecedented growth of an American lesbian subcultures.

But while no large US lesbian subculture was established as a result of WWI, the period seems to have marked the beginning of some self-conscious sexual experimentation between women. In the midst of women’s Freudian enlightenment about the putative power of sexual drives, 2 million men were sent overseas and many more were called away from home for the war effort. It’s been speculated that women, turning to each other faute de mieux, found they liked sex with other women just fine.”

“Despite vestiges of suppression, public curiosity about the subject couldn’t be stopped. In cosmopolitan areas like NY, the intrigue with homosexuality for the 20s ‘rebels’ was manifested by drag balls where some men wore evening gowns and some women wore tuxedos and many came to be spectators. The balls were held in ‘respectable’ ballrooms such as the ritzy Savoy and Hotel Astor and in the huge Madison Square Garden. Despite the voices of censorship such as those that occasionally emerged in response to Broadway plays, these events were officially sanctioned by police permits and attracted large numbers, as 1 Broadway gossip sheet of the 20s announced in a headline: ‘6000 Crowd Huge Hall as Queer Men and Women Dance.’

Although the headline hints at a clear distinction between the ‘queers’ and the spectators, the fiction of the period suggests that the lines sometimes blurred as the ‘heterosexual’ tourists made contacts that were more than social among the avowedly homosexual participants. Such balls were for many sophisticates what the 20s was all about — the ultimate in rebellion and a good laugh at the naive world that took as self-evident matters such as sex and gender.”

Black Lesbian Origins

“While homosexual men were sometimes being run out of small white towns, in Harlem tolerance extended to such a degree that black lesbians in butch/femme couples married each other in large wedding ceremonies, replete with bridesmaids and attendants. Real marriage licenses were obtained by masculinizing a first name or having a gay male surrogate apply for a license for the lesbian couple. Those licenses were actually placed on file in the NYC Marriage Bureau. The marriages were often common knowledge among Harlem heterosexuals.

Such relative tolerance permitted black lesbians to socialize openly in their own communities instead of seeking out alien turf as white lesbians generally felt compelled to do. While heterosexual Harlemites often made fun of lesbians, they were willing to share bars and dancefloors with them. There were thus plenty of places where black lesbians could amuse themselves and meet other lesbians in Harlem.”

“Although unalloyed homosexuality may still have connoted in 20s Harlem the abnormality of ‘a man trapped in a woman’s body,’ bisexuality seems to have suggested that a woman was super-sexy.

Among some sophisticated Harlem heterosexuals in the 20s the lesbian part of bisexuality was simply not taken very seriously. Even housewives occasionally indulged in lesbian affairs, with the open approval of their husbands. One Harelm resident of the 20s remembers frequent lesbian parties and dinners thrown by a wealthy married woman with a big house and a lavish garden. ‘Her husband didn’t mind her with the girls,’ she recalls, ‘but he said if he ever caught her with a man he’d cut her head off.’ No less than among white libertines for centuries, some Harlemites believed that real sex was penetration by a penis and love between women was just fooling around.”

“Perhaps the tone was set for Harlem’s upper class by A’Lelia Walker, who inherited a fortune from her former-washerwoman mother, inventor of a hair straightener that made millions. A majestic woman, nearly 6 feet tall, A’Lelia often went around with riding crop in hand and jeweled turban on her head. Though married several times, she was attended by a circle of handsome women and effete men, and as one of her contemporaries observed, ‘all the women were crazy about her.’ Some believed that her various marriages were ‘fronts’ and her husbands were themselves homosexuals, but like many of the sophisticated bisexual Harlemites, she felt it desirable to be married, regardless of what she did in her affectional life.

A’Lelia held salons that were attended by French princesses, Russian grand dukes, men and women on NY’s social register, Prohibition czars, Harlem Renaissance writers, and world-renowned intellectuals. But she threw other kinds of parties as well. Mabel Hampton, a Harlem dancer in the 20s who attended some of Walker’s less formal gatherings with a white lesbian friend, remembers them as

funny parties — there were men and women, straight and gay. They were kind of orgies. Some people had clothes on, some didn’t. People would hug and kiss on pillows and do anything they wanted to do. You could watch if you wanted to. Some came to watch, some came to play. You had to be cute and well-dressed to get in.

A’Lelia Walker probably had much to do with the manifest acceptance of bisexuality among the upper classes in Harlem: those who had moral reservations about bisexuality or considered it strange or decadent learned to pretend a sophistication or suppress their disapproval if they desired A’Lelia’s goodwill.”

“The complex attitudes with regard to female homosexual relations that were prevalent among sophisticated Harlemites in the 20s are sometimes reflected in the lyrics of the blues. Those songs, which are often satirical or funny, don’t deal with bisexuality, perhaps because that affectional preference lent itself less readily to humorous caricature than did blatant lesbianism. Instead, they sometimes present extreme lesbian stereotypes, which allowed the listener to recognize the situation without introducing subtle complications and to laugh at the in-joke. With the usual goal of titillation, the songs also satirically probed masculine uneasiness about the suspicion that women know how to ‘do it’ better to each other than men do. And they frequently admitted to an ambivalent fascination.

In some of these songs the characterization of the lesbian combines images of freakishness with a bravado that is at once laughable and admirable. The lesbian is ridiculed for her illicit and unorthodox sexuality. But she’s also an outlaw, which makes her a bit of a culture hero in an oppressed community.”

“George Hannah’s song, although it seems to be bent on provoking the male listener to both worry and laughter, contains a secret message to the female listener that lesbianism can be superior to heterosexuality. The remarkable dual message that characterizes some of these blues songs is particularly clear in one lyric that baldly states that while lesbian sex is improper, it is nevertheless terrific:

I know women that don’t like men.

The way they do is a crying sin.

It’s dirty but good, oh yes, it’s just dirty but good.

The song at once urges men to worry and women to ‘try it.’ The humor is derived from the double discourse that pretends disapproval but hints at titillation in the face of sexual daring.”

“Recent historians have suggested that it was American working-class women of the early 20th century who first began to enjoy a broader spectrum of public amusements and brought the concept of such diverse pastimes into the lives of middle-class women later in the century. This theory is particularly revealing with regard to the development of a visible lesbian subculture in America. For example, in the 19th century it would’ve been unthinkable for women other than prostitutes to frequent saloons. But by the second decade of the century, other working-class women began visiting saloons that offered food as well as drink. That new social custom undoubtedly made it easier for lesbians of the working class than it would’ve been for their middle-class counterparts to conceive of themselves in a saloon environment. Working-class lesbians could therefore become prominent in the establishment of lesbian bars, which became the single most important public manifestation of the subculture for many decades, eventually attracting young lesbians who weren’t of working-class backgrounds.”

Lesbian Smashers

“Although Millay’s erotic life had been exclusively with women, once out of that all-female environment and in Greenwich Village, there was pressure on her to become at least bisexual. As a good bohemian she pretended, of course, to regard homosexuality in a blase manner, as her response to the psychoanalyst who tried to cure her of a headache suggests. Yet despite her panache, Millay eventually bowed to the pressure to give up exclusive lesbianism, as many women’s college grads must’ve had in the heterosexual 20s, when companionate marriage was seen as the ‘advanced’ women’s highest goal.

The unpublished memoirs of Floyd Dell, who became Millay’s first male lover in Greenwich Village, give some insight into how women who came to the Village as lesbians were sometimes steered toward heterosexuality in this ‘progressive’ atmosphere. For weeks Millay had agreed to go to bed with Dell, since she was taught in the Village that free bohemian women should have no scruples against such things; but she was obviously ambivalent, insisting they remain fully clothed and refusing to have intercourse. Finally Dell pressured her sufficiently to make her overcome her reluctance. ‘I know your secret,’ he said. ‘You’re still a virgin. You have merely had homosexual affairs with girls in college,’ devaluing such relationships as a mature sexual experience. Dell claims that Millay was astonished at his deductive powers and she admitted,’ No man has ever found me out before.’ In her chagrin she gave in to him. Dell’s memoirs indicate that he was one of the early lesbian-smashers. He says he made love to her, feeling that it was his ‘duty to rescue her.’ His rescue was obviously imperfect, however, since she was still having affairs with women years later when she took up with a woman named Thelma. Dell finally had to admit with disappointment that Millay couldn’t be entirely rescued. Years after their relationship, he lamented, ‘It was impossible to understand [her]…I’ve often thought she may have been fonder of women than of men.’”

The Depression

“In disregard of the discomfort of many Village men, love between women did continue to flourish there throughout the 20s and a lesbian subculture took root, challenging the requisite tolerance of bohemia. By the early 30s there were enough like-minded women to form a real community. Its HQ, side by side that of homosexual men, was a block of nightclubs. Gay men converted the street into a major cruising area, and it was soon called the Auction Block, although lesbians claimed a bit of space for themselves in the clubs that catered to them and featured lesbian entertainers.”

“Freud’s work and distorted interpretations of it sometimes even became an excuse for various alarmists during the very sex-conscious 20s. For example, Freud believed that all children went through a homosexual phase on their way to heterosexuality. His identification of childhood homosexuality, ‘normal’ as Freud thought it was, alerted doctors to the existence of the phenomenon, and then provided fuel for hysteria among some of them.”

“Psychiatrists were now warning parents that every childhood and adolescent emotional attachment must be scrutinized in order to nip homosexuality in the bud and that reciprocal same-sex crushes, which had long been considered a normal aspect of childhood, were truly dangerous even if no sexual activity occurred, since they might stimulate the girl’s unconscious desires and fixate her on same-sex love.

“Among middle-class women the depression was the great hindrance to a more rapid development of lesbian lifestyles, primarily because it squelched for them the possibility of permanently committing themselves to same-sex relationships. Such arrangements demanded above all that they have some degree of financial independence so that they didn’t have to marry in order to survive, and financial independence became more problematic for them in the 30s. It wasn’t that fewer women worked — in fact the number of working women increased slightly during that decade. It was rather that in tight economic times they were discouraged from competing against men for better-paying jobs and most women had to settle for low-salaried, menial jobs that demanded a second income for a modicum of comfort and made the legal permanence of marriage attractive.

Poor women who loved other women had never been led to believe that they might expect more rewarding or remunerative work. Though the depression rendered some of them jobless and homeless, they sometimes managed to make the best of a bad situation. For example, 1939 stats estimate that about 150k women were wandering around the country as hobos or ‘sisters of the road,’ as they were called by male hobos. For young working-class lesbians without work, hobo life could be an adventure. It permitted them to wear pants, as they usually couldn’t back home, and to indulge a passion for wanderlust and excitement that was permitted only to men in easier times. Life on the road also gave them a protective camouflage. They could hitch up with another woman, ostensibly for safety and company, but in reality they were a lesbian couple, and they could see the world together. Depression historians have suggested that such working-class lesbian couples weren’t uncommon in the 30s hobo populations.”

“Few middle-class women who wanted to maintain their status into which they’d been born could afford to live as lesbians in the 30s. Lesbian ‘bravado’ became extremely difficult largely for economic reasons, although women who married might adjust their lives to a bisexual compromise.”

“Working women came to be the scapegoat for the poor economy that left 25% of the labor force unemployed at the height of the depression. Norman Cousins’ solution, rash and simplistic as it was, reflected a general view: ‘There are approximately 10 million people out of work in the US today,’ Cousins pointed out. ‘There are also 10 million or more women, married or single, who are job holders. Simply fire the women, who shouldn’t be working anyway, and hire the men. Presto! No unemployment. No relief rolls. No depression.’”

“There was little honest admission (outside of Cousins’ article) that females should be bumped from jobs because it was thought that men needed the work more than women did. Instead, just as had already happened around the turn of the century and was to happen again 2 decades later, it was suddenly discovered that work defeminized a woman. According to their surveys, 1930s women’s mags and their readers were in agreement that if a woman held an important professional position she would lose her womanly qualities.”

“Eleanor Roosevelt’s well-documented affair with journalist Lorena Hicock was in progress when FDR was inaugurated in 1935. At the ceremony Eleanor wore a sapphire ring that Lorena had given her. It was their relationship that was uppermost in her mind during that historically momentous inauguration:

All day I’ve thought of you…Oh! I want to put my arms around you. I ache to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort. I look it & think she does love me or I wouldn’t be wearing it!

The affair continued through a good part of Eleanor’s early years in the White House, from where she wrote endearments to Lorean during their separations, such as:

Goodnight, dear one. I want to put my arms around you & kiss you at the corner of your mouth. And in a little more than a week now — I shall.

Oh! dear one, it is all the little things, the tones in your voice, the feel of your hair, gestures, these are the things I think about & long for. I wish I could lie down beside you tonight and take you in my arms.

It isn’t known if FDR understood the nature of their relationship, but the rest of the world thought of them as good friends and little suspected that they were lovers. Obviously women from those families didn’t need to worry about depression economics like some of their socially inferior sisters, but heterosexual marriage permitted them to maintain a position in their society that would have been problematic had they chosen to live openly as lesbians.”

“The unexamined contention that the female who loved other females was someone other than the ‘normal’ woman was reinforced. Her otherness was depicted sometimes as sickness, sometimes as immorality, only very seldom as consonant with soundness and decency — and always as a rare ‘condition.’”

“If Box-Car Bertha can be believed, in areas such as Chicago during the depression there flourished a fairly lively lesbian subculture in which working-class women sometimes even mixed with wealthy women, a rare phenomenon in lesbian subcultures throughout this century (although common among gay men, who often class-mixed for sexual contacts). She tells of a group of lesbians who had a ‘magnificent apartment’ where they would throw soirees called ‘Mickey Mouse’s party.’ When Bertha attended she met half a dozen ‘wealthy women,’ 4 of whom were married. They claimed to be merely ‘sightseers,’ but she interjects, ‘Actually they had more than a superficial interest in the lesbian girls.’ Apparently Bertha continued her contact with these women after the party, despite her claim that she disliked lesbians. She reports ‘constant exploitation’ among the women (is she hinting of blackmail or prostitution?). The working-class women would get the names and addresses of these wealthy women, Bertha writes, and borrow money from them by saying, ‘I met you at Mickey Mouse’s party.’

But outside of all-female institutions and rare social configurations such as Mickey Mouse’s party, making contact with other lesbians for romantic or social purposes was far more complicated and problematic than it has become over the last few decades. Unless one was lucky enough to become an insider in a group, lesbian life in the 30s could be lonely. Since there were no personals, no lesbian political orgs, few special-interest social groups for lesbians, none of the social abundance that exists today in American cities, contact often depended on chance. And because silence was so widespread, it was possible that one often missed that chance. Many lesbians probably really did feel then, as Ann Aldrich’s later pot boiler was titled, that ‘we walk alone.’”

“But most lesbians never went to bars. Occasionally middle-class lesbians could make contacts with other women if they were members of a private group such as the Nucleus Club, an informal NY-based org of the late 30s that held weekly parties for lesbians together with gay men. But although police harassment of lesbians was not common in the 30s, they knew, perhaps by their observation of gay male experiences, that it was a potential they had to take into account, and that awareness must’ve dampened the enthusiasm of many to join such a club. The Nucleus Club parties were in private homes, but the group still thought it essential to adopt the rule that each gay men would pair with a lesbian as they left the party and they would go strolling out arm in arm so that neighbors would think the couples had been to a heterosexual gathering. One shouldn’t underestimate the fun in this game of ‘fooling the straights,’ but underneath the fun was genuine fear.

Middle-class women who dared perceive themselves as lesbians had some possibilities of making contacts more safely in all-women institutions such as summer camps, residence halls, or universities. Mary remembers that in the 30s, as a teen, she had been a counselor in the Girl Scouts and Camp Fire Girls camps, and when she decided that she was a lesbian she became aware that there were many other young women among the counselors who shared her interests and who identified themselves to each other as lesbian. University life also provided an arena for women who consciously thought of themselves as lesbians to make contact with each other. At U of Texas in the mid-30s women physical education majors staged a mock-prom, ostensibly making fun of the university’s regular annual proms. Although straight students were unaware of it, many of the physical ed majors were lesbians. The mock-prom was a great lark for them since it sanctioned them to wear drag and dance together in a hall of a hallowed institution.

But such cavalier gaiety was only occasional among lesbian college women in the 30s. Their more usual reticence suggests that they were as fearful as the members of the Nucleus Club. When Mary went to the U of Washington in the late 30s, she and her lesbian friends had a table in the commons at which they could usually find each other any day between 8 and 3. But what Mary remembers most about the experience now is that they all felt they had to be very circumspect:

Although several of us were in couples, no one ever talked about their love lives. We could unload with problems about families, jobs, money, but not lesbianism. If 2 women broke up they wouldn’t discuss it with the group, thought they might have a confidante who was also part of the group. It was our attitude that this sort of relationship was nobody’s business. We all really knew about each other of course. But the idea was, ‘You don’t know if someone is a lesbian unless you’ve slept with her.’ You didn’t belong if you were the blabbermouth type.”

“Non-college women were often just as reluctant to risk betraying their lesbianism, even among women they were all but certain were also lesbians. Sandra, who worked in a Portland department store during the early 30s, tells of having been part of a group of 8 women — 4 couples — who went skiing every winter between 1934–37. ‘I’m sure we were all gay,’ she remembers, but we never said a word about it. Talking about it just wasn’t the thing to do. Never once did I hear the L word in that group or any word like it — even though we always rented a cabin together and we all agreed that we only wanted 4 beds since we slept in pairs.’

Because lesbians were so frightened about divulging themselves and often had no idea where to meet other lesbians for social contact, life could be lonely even if they were lucky enough to have found a mate. May says she met her lover at the U of Texas in the late 20s, and though they stayed together for 20+ years, they told almost no one about the nature of their relationship. It placed such a strain on them that May often thought of leaving Virgie, especially during the 30s, because ‘I was tired of hiding in a corner. And there was no question of coming out. I wanted so much to be able to talk freely with people, to be like everyone else, not to feel like we loved in a wasteland, but that was impossible. I had a lot of straight women friends, but I thought that as long as I was in that relationship I could never have a close friend. I knew how people would’ve looked down upon us if they’d guessed.’

Although May and Virgie had heard about gay men, they knew no lesbians. May claims that she didn’t become aware that there were other lesbians in the world until 1950, when they began going to dog shows and occasionally saw lesbian couples there, but even then they didn’t talk to them.”

WWII and its Aftermath

“WWII WAC Sergeant Johnnie Phelps, in response to a request from General Eisenhower that she ferret out the lesbians in her battalion:

Yessir. If the General pleases I will be happy to do this investigation…But, sir, it would be unfair of me not to tell you, my name is going to head the list…You should also be aware that you’re going to have to replace all the file clerks, the section heads, most of the commanders, and the motor pool…I think you should also take into consideration that there have been no illegal pregnancies, no cases of venereal disease, and the General himself has been the one to award good conduct commendations and service commendations to these members of the WAC detachment.

General Eisenhower: Forget the order

— Bunny MacCulloch interview with Johnnie Phelps, 1982"

“‘For the first time I had a name for myself.’ She was far from alone among those young females who accepted that name for themselves as an ‘explanation’ of their emotions. Having gone into military service during the war, where they were thrown together in comradeship, day and night, with large groups of females who had varying degrees of knowledge and experience, they found not only that the war fostered love between women, but that such love was ‘lesbianism.’”

“While effeminacy in a male might’ve altered military psychologists to the possibility of his homosexuality, what was perceived of as masculinity in a female enlistee would not have rendered her undesirable, because the military especially needed women who wanted to do work that was traditionally masculine.

The WAAC even warned officers not to set out to expose or punish lesbian behavior. In a printed series of Sex Hygiene lectures, officers were specifically told that the circumstances of war and a young woman’s removal from familiar surroundings could easily promote ‘more consciousness of sex and more difficulties concerning it.’ The lectures suggested that the officers should be sympathetic to close friendships that might crop up between women under wartime conditions. The officers were also alerted that such intimacies may even ‘eventually take some form of sexual expression,’ but they were told that they must never play games of hide-and-seek in an attempt to discover lesbianism or indulge in witch-hunting and they must approach the situation with an attitude of generosity and tolerance. They were to take action against lesbianism ‘only in so far as its manifestations undermine the efficiency of the individual concerned and the stability of the group.’ Discharge was to be used only as a last resort in cases that were universally demoralizing. The officers were specifically cautioned that ‘any officer bringing an unjust or unprovable charge against a woman in this regard will be severely reprimanded.’ The military could not afford to lose womanpower at the height of a war.”

“In addition to the changing attitudes about what constituted morality, the war also contributed to an easier formation and development of a distinctive lesbian ‘style’ because it made pants acceptable garb for women. In the years before the war, the public was often scandalized if a woman appeared in pants outside her home. Even butch lesbians understood that while they might wear pants at home, they had to change to a skirt to go out on the street — unless they were able to pass as men. Not even movie stars were immune from censure, as was suggested by 30s headlines such as ‘Miss [Marlene] Dietrich Defends Use of Pants’ and ‘GARBO IN PANTS!’ According to the latter article, ‘Innocent bystanders gasped in amazement to see…Greta Garbo striding swiftly along Hollywod Blvd dressed in men’s clothes.’ But since hundreds of thousands of women who worked in war factory jobs during the early 40s were actually obliged to wear pants, they had become a permanent part of American women’s wardrobe, and they continued to be so after the war. The lesbian who loathed dresses felt much freer to wear pants out of doors than she had been in the prewar years. Pants soon became a costume and a symbol that allowed women who defined themselves as lesbians to identify each other.

Perhaps because women were allowed more latitude in their dress during the war, butch and femme distinctions in style could be more pronounced, and the roles became very clear-cut for more lesbians. Rusty Brown, a Navy welder, remembers that in a coffeehouse she frequented, a lesbian hangout in the early 40s, butch and femme roles were already very strict. ‘You could tell when you walked in who was butch and who was femme,’ she recalls. Unless 2 women were on a date, butches would only sit with other butches and femmes would sit with femmes. Stringent codes of behavior were soon established. For example, butches could date only femmes. They must never even dance with another butch because, Brown recalls, ‘We were too much alike…If we danced, who was going to lead! We would both be dominant.’ Such behavior codes, which seem to have received sharper definition at this time, when butches were sanctioned to appear completely masculine in their dress, became pervasive in the working-class lesbian subculture of the 40s.

Ironically, the military also contributed to the establishment of a larger lesbian subculture when it became less lenient in its policy toward homosexuals after the war was over. Thousands of homosexual personnel were loaded on ‘queer ships’ and sent with ‘undesirable’ discharges to the nearest U.S. port. Most of them believed that they couldn’t go home again. They simply stayed where they were disembarked, and their numbers helped to form the large homosexual enclaves that were beginning to develop in port cities such as NY, SF, LA, and Boston. Historian Allan Berube wryly remarks, ‘The government sponsored a migration of the gay community.’

The military even helped to introduce lesbians who had honorable discharges to large metro areas where they could meet others like themselves. Mac, who’d never been out of Iowa before she joined the service, was typical. She’s lived in SF since the war, and explains that when she had been stationed in the Bay Area she discovered that ‘SF felt like home. I found a lot of different sorts of attractive people there. And I knew everyone minded their own business and didn’t care about what I was doing.’ She speculates that were it not for the war she might still be in Iowa.”

“Freud stated with surprising enlightenment that it wasn’t adequate to an undrerstanding of homosexuality to consider only patients in treatment, that if doctors would ‘strive to comprehend a wider field of experience’ they would see that homosexuality was far from being a degeneracy, and that even the concept of perversion was really a matter of cultural definition. Instead psychiatrists based their definitions of lesbianism almost exclusively on records of patients who needed psychiatric care. It was worse than defining heterosexuality through divorce court records.

Every aspect of same-sex love came to be defined as sick.”

“In 1950, the persecution escalated. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, whose barbarous tactics set the mood of the era, began by attracting attention as a Communist witch-hunter but soon saw an opportunity to broaden his field. Ironically, McCarthy’s 2 aides were flamingly homosexual, even flitting about Europe as an ‘item,’ but that didn’t stop him from charging the State Department with knowingly harboring homosexuals and thereby placing the nation’s security at risk.”

“Although McCarthy was censured by the Senate in 1954 for his overly zealous witch-hunting, the spirit he helped establish lived on through that decade and into the next. Homosexuals in all walks of life, not just those who worked for the government, were hunted down. Not even young college students were safe. In 1955 the dean and assistant dean of students at UCLA published an article in the journal School and Society lamenting the ‘attraction of colleges, both public and private, for overt, hardened homosexuals’ and recommending that all ‘sexually deviate’ students be routed out of colleges if they were unwilling to undergo psychiatric treatment to change their sexual orientation. Students entering state supported universities were obliged to take a battery of tests in which thinly veiled questions on sexual preference appeared over and over. What the authorities expected such tests to reveal is unimaginable, since homosexuals who were smart enough to get into those institutions were surely smart enough to realize that they must dissemble.”

“Lesbians who enlisted in the military at this time were at grave risk, regardless of their patriotism or their devotion to their tasks. Civilian life could be difficult in the 50s, but military life was harrowing. The tolerant policy regarding lesbianism that was instituted during the war was long gone. Now love between women in the military was viewed as criminal. Military witch-hunts of lesbians were carried out relentlessly, though frequently without success: not because there were few lesbians in the military, but rather because civilian life had already trained lesbians to guard against detection and they learned in the military to polish those skills.”

“Although the McCarthy era has long been dead and the lot of the lesbian has improved considerably, the years of suffering took their toll and created a legacy of suspicion that has been hard to overcome, more liberal times notwithstanding. That suspicion hasn’t been entirely groundless. Even in the last 2 decades, at the height of the gay liberation movement, lesbian teachers have been fried from their jobs simply for being lesbian.

Wilma, who was a high school physical ed teacher in Downey, CA, in the early 70s, says that after a couple of years at the school she decided she would tell her best friend on the faculty that she was a lesbian because ‘I thought we were really close. She was always telling me about her problems with her husband and her children, and I was tired of having a lie with her.’ The other woman went to the principal the next day, saying that in light of what she’d learned she could no longer work with Wilma. He immediately called Wilma into his office and demanded that she write out a resignation on the spot. In return for her resignation he promised he wouldn’t get her credential revoked: ‘But he said he just wanted me out of the school. We’d been good friends. He was priming me for a job as an administrator. I thought, ‘I screwed up my whole life for a 10-minute confession.’

Wilma was able to get another job in the LA school system, but she drastically changed her manner of relating to her colleagues. She married a gay man, always brought him to faculty parties, and made sure everyone knew to address her as ‘Mrs.’ She came to school in dresses, hose, and high heels: ‘Even when I went to the school cafeteria I’d change from my sweats into a dress.’ 15 years later, she still feels she must constantly censor herself with her colleagues: ‘I keep a low profile and I’m always on guard.’

Wilma’s situation remains a nightmare for many lesbians. While very few engaged in front marriages in the 70s and 80s, some still attempted to pass as straight and even invent, or let heterosexuals imagine, an imaginary heterosexual social life. 2 studies of lesbians, one in the 70s, the other in the 80s, both indicated that 2/3 of the sample believed that they would lose their jobs if their sociosexual orientation were known. Most of those who didn’t feel threatened were self-employed or worked in the arts, where homosexuality is equated with bohemianism.

Despite the many successes of the gay liberation movement, which has made homosexuality much more acceptable in America, middle-class lesbians often feel that activists are a real threat to them because they draw public attention to the phenomenon of lesbianism and thus create suspicion about all unmarried women. The closeted lesbian’s cover could be blown. Older lesbians especially, who perfected the techniques of hiding through most of their adult lives, still cannot conceive of suddenly coming out into the open, even in what appear to be freer times.”

“Lesbians inherited a mixed legacy from the 40s and 50s, when lesbianism came to mean, much more than it had earlier, not only a choice of sexual orientation, but a social orientation as well, though usually lived covertly. While the war and the migration afterward of masses of women, who often ended up in urban centers, meant that various lesbian subcultures could be established or expanded, these years were a most unfortunate time for such establishment and expansion. Suddenly there were large numbers of women who could become a part of a lesbian subculture, yet also suddenly there were more reasons than ever for the subculture to stay underground. The need to be covert became one of the chief manifestations of lesbian existence for an entire generation — until the 70s and, for some women who don’t trust recent changes to be permanent, until the present.”

“There were a few attempts by working-class and young lesbians in the 50s and 60 to build institutions other than the gay bars. The most notable was the softball team. During those years many lesbians formed teams or made up the audiences for teams all over the country.”

“Although the gay bars were for many young and working-class lesbians their only home as authentic social beings, they were hazardous for various reasons. They posed a particular danger because they encouraged drinking. You couldn’t stay unless you had a drink in front of you, and bar personnel were often encouraged to ‘push’ drinks so that the bar could remain in business. As a result, alcoholism was high among women who frequented the bars, much more prevalent, in fact, than among their straight working-class counterparts.”

“The rebel lifestyle, in which these women as lesbians demanded some of the social privileges and customs ordinarily reserved for men, may have also encouraged heavy drinking among them. Those who challenged social orthodoxies about sexuality in the 50s and 60s found it not only easier, but even necessary, to challenge other orthodoxies, such as the appropriateness of sobriety for females. They would drink if they pleased, drink ‘like a man.’ Drinking in the 50s became another means for lesbians to refuse the confinement of femininity.

However, it wasn’t the drinking problem alone that made gay bars a dangerous place to be. While the police frequently harassed butch-looking women on the streets, the worst police harassment took place inside the gay bars. In many cities, as long as a bar owner was willing to pay for police protection, the bars seemed relatively safe — unless it was close to an election period in which the incumbent felt compelled to ‘clean up’ the gay bars for the sake of his record. During those times raids were frequent. The bars sometimes took precautions against raids. At the Canyon Club in LA, a membership bar patronized by both gay men and women, dancing would be permitted only in the upstairs room. If the police appeared at the door, a red light would be flashed upstairs and the same-sex partners on the dance floor would know to grab someone of the opposite sex quickly and continue dancing. At the Star Room, a lesbian bar on the outskirts of LA, women could dance but not too close. The manager would scrutinize the dance floor periodically with flashlight in hand. There had to be enough distance between a couple so that a beam from the flashlight could pass between them. In that way the owner hoped to avoid charges of disorderly conduct should there be any undercover agents among the patrons.

There were indeed undercover agents in the bars. Preceding the 1960 election year, the head of the Alcoholic Beverage Commission in NorCal announced ‘a vigorous new campaign against bars catering to homosexuals,’ and he admitted that ‘a dozen undercover agents are at work gathering evidence to root out homosexual bars in the Bay Area.’ While the prime target were the men’s bars because there were more of them, women’s bars fell victim to the campaign as well.

Most street-smart lesbians who frequented the gay bars knew about undercover agents and tried to take precautions against entrapment, but there wasn’t much that could be done. Perhaps the tyranny of ‘appropriate’ butch and femme dress in working-class bars can be explained in part by patrons’ fears: A Columbus woman recalls walking into a lesbian bar in the 50s and finding that no one would speak to her. After some hours the waitress told her it was because of the way she was dressed — no one could tell what her sexual identity was, butch or femme, and they were afraid that if she didn’t know enough to dress right it was because she was a policewoman.”

“In the paddy wagon a woman panicked and ate her driver’s license.”

“In the search by a policewoman they were made to pull down their underpants and bend over. After the search they were transported to small cells, where they were kept all night. in the morning they were given bread and watery coffee for which they were charged a dollar each and were then taken out to court: ‘On the way we had to pass a line of cops on the stairs. It was like running the gauntlet because they all jeered as we went by and made crude remarks.’ The charges against the women were ‘disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace.’”

“When a young woman entered the subculture in the 50s she was immediately initiated into the meaning and importance of the roles, since understanding them was the sine qua non of being a lesbian within that group. While some women saw themselves as falling naturally into one role or the other, even those who didn’t were urged to choose a role by other lesbians, or sometimes their own observations forced them to conclude that a choice was necessary. Being neither butch nor femme wasn’t an option if one wanted to be part of the young or working-class lesbian subculture.”

“A New England woman recalls that ‘kiki’ referred to 2 butches or femmes who were lovers. They often had to ‘sneak it,’ she says, because of the hostility of those who were committed to roles.”

“Such strict role divisions continued throughout the 60s in much of the bar subculture, even during the era of ‘unisex’ among heterosexuals; they’re testimony to the essentially conservative nature of a minority group as it attempts to create legitimacy for itself by fabricating traditions and rules. One woman, who’s 5'10” and stocky, remembers going to a lesbian bar in Springfield, MA, in 1967 that had 2 restrooms. ‘I stood in line for a couple of minute sand then the girl in front of me said, ‘You have to get out of here. This is the femme line.’ She pointed to the signs on the restroom doors. One was marked ‘butch’ and the other was marked ‘femme.’”

“Although the sexual dynamic between a couple who identified as butch and femme could be subtle and complex rather than a simple imitation of heterosexuality, some lesbians considered themselves ‘stone butches’ and observed taboos similar to those that were current among working-class straight men. For example, letting another woman be sexually aggressive with you if you were a stone butch was called being flipped, and it was shameful in many working-class lesbian communities because it meant that a butch had permitted another woman to take power away from her by sexually ‘femalizing’ her, making a ‘pussy’ out of her, in the vernacular. Among black lesbians a butch who allowed herself to be ‘flipped’ was called a pancake. In other circles also a flipped butch was greeted with ridicule if word got out, as it sometimes did if a disgruntled femme wanted to shame a former lover.

The taboo against being flipped, which was probably related to the low esteem in which women were held at the time, even made some young butches try to better protect their image by refusing to undress completely when they had sexual relations. One former stone butch recalls, ‘The derision shown those few butches who’d been flipped was enough to prevent many of us, especially those of us who weren’t yet secure about sexuality, from letting our partners touch us during lovemaking.’ Having to hold on to power by being the only aggressor in a relationship, as some butches felt they must, was a stringent task, not too different from that of the young working-class men, who had to maintain total vigilance so that no one ever made him a ‘punk.’

Perhaps it wasn’t so much that most butches desired to be men. It was rather that for many of them in an era of neat pigeonholes the apparent logic of the connection between sexual object choice and gender id was overwhelming, and lacking the support of a history that contradicted that connection, they had no encouragement at the time to formulate new conceptions. If they loved women it must be because they were mannish, and vice versa. Therefore, many learned to behave as men were supposed to behave, sometimes with rough machismo, sometimes enacting the most idealized images of male behavior that they saw in their parent society — courting, protecting, lighting cigarettes, opening car doors, holding out chairs. They followed that chivalric behavior, as real men often didn’t outside of romantic magazines and movies. It’s not surprising that butch/femme was in its heyday during the 50s, when not only were the parent-culture roles exaggerated between men and women, but the Hollywood value of dash and romance served to inspire the fancy of the young, especially those who were at a loss about where to turn for their images of self.”

The Late 60s and 70s

“Lesbian historian Joan Nestle remembers a 23-year-old femme who carried her favorite dildo in a pink satin purse to the bars every Saturday so her partner for the night would understand exactly what she wanted.”

“Just by virtue of being lesbians, femmes must’ve had a certain amount of rebellious courage that wasn’t typical of the 50s female. They engaged in sexual relations outside of marriage while most of their young female straight counterparts didn’t dare. They braved the night alone to go out to gay bars to meet butches while straight women hadn’t yet attempted to ‘take back the night’ and wander the streets for their own pleasure and purpose. They often supported themselves as well as their butch partner if their partner was unwilling to compromise her masculine appearance and unable to find a job that wouldn’t require donning a skirt. Femmes were attracted to a rebel sexuality, and they let themselves be seen with women who made no attempt to hide their outlaw status at a time when supposedly every woman’s fondest wish was to be a wife and mom and to fit in with the rest of the community. Femmes were called fluffs in some regions during the 50s and 60s, but that term could be quite inappropriate.”

“The roles could even change in the course of an evening, as Ann tells it:

Once I went to an LA bar to meet this butch, and I was dressed femme. But she wasn’t there so I decided to go to another bar. On the way, I changed to butch. Butches had a lot more opportunities in the bars and I just wanted to meet another woman.”

“As with their straight working-class counterparts, women who maintained butch or femme identities were often socially separated from each other, coming together only for love relationships. They were no more friends than straight men and women during that era. If a butch needed consolation, defense, someone with whom to spend an evening out, it was to another butch she went. Historian John D’Emilio has offered a compelling anthropological explanation for this particular homogenderal social arrangement. He sees its function as being analogous to the incest taboo, which guarantees that parental and sibling relationships remain stable though erotic relationships may fluctuate: lovers might come and go, but friends would always remain the same as long as they were off-limits as lovers. Butches would thus always have other butches as friends, and femmes would have other femmes.

But perhaps the most important function of the roles was that they created a certain sense of membership in a special group, with its own norms and values and even uniforms. The roles offered lesbians a social identity and a consciousness of shared differences from women in the straight world. Through them outsiders could be insiders.”

“Wealthy and middle-class lesbians generally rejected the roles in public and were much less likely to follow them in their love lives than were working class and young lesbians. Usually their dress and couple relationships didn’t readily fall into patterns of masculine and feminine. Although 1 woman in a couple may have been more naturally aggressive or more prone to traditionally feminine activities than the other, the development or expression of such traits was seldom as self-conscious as it was among the young and working class.

Wealthy lesbians seem sometimes to have found butch-femme roles and dress aesthetically repulsive. At Cherry Grove, NY, a resort popular among rich lesbians during the 40s and 50s, the style was ‘elegant’ and ‘suave.’ Historian Esther Newton, who interviewed several former residents, reports that by the late 50s these women left the Grove because more obvious butch and femme types began to come in. ‘They were diesel dykes, big and fat and mannish,’ one of Newton’s informants recalls. ‘And there was always some drama, always some femme in a fight with another femme.’ To them such obvious role division was strictly a manifestation of working-class lesbianism, and they had neither sympathy nor understanding for it. It was ‘tacky,’ as one described it.”

“In gay male society, wealthy men historically have often been interested in ‘rough trade’ and class mixing wasn’t uncommon. Among lesbians during the radical 70s wealthier women began to pride themselves on what they perceived of as their new democratic lesbianism. But in the 50s and 60s and earlier, such class mixing was extremely rare. Working-class lesbians tended to socialize only with other working-class lesbians. While some wealthy lesbians would occasionally have ties among middle-class lesbian groups, more often those groups tended to be made up exclusively of women who earned their livings in professions such as teachers, librarians, or social workers. The classes remained as discrete as they were in the parent culture.”

“In the years after the war, when butch/femme roles became as intrinsic to the young and working-class lesbian subculture, a good deal of hostility developed between those who did and those who didn’t conform to roles. Butches and femmes laughed at middle-class ‘kiki’ women for their ‘wishy-washy’ self-presentation. The few lesbian publications of the era, which were middle-class in their aspirations and tone expressed embarrassment over butch and femme roles, which, by their obviousness, encouraged the stereotype of the lesbian among straights. Lisa Ben wrote a poem titled ‘Protest,’ which expressed her puzzlement about why young and working-class lesbians would want to ‘imitate men’:

What irony that many of us choose

To ape that which by nature we despise

Appear ridiculous to others’ eyes

By traveling life’s path in borrowed shoes.

How willingly we go with tresses shorn

And beauty masked in graceless, drab attire

A rose’s loveliness is to admire

Who’d cut the bloom and thus expose the thorn?…”

“Some middle-class lesbians complained that it was butches and their femmes who made lesbians outcasts. One of the earliest issues of The Ladder proclaimed: ‘The kids in fly front pants and with butch haircuts and mannish manner are the worst publicity that we can get.’ Beginning in October 157 and until the height of the civil rights movement in 1967, Daughters of Bilitis listed on the inside cover of every issue among the org’s goals ‘advocating [to lesbians] a mode of behavior and dress acceptable to society.’ The middle-class readership applauded that goal, finding it crucial to their aspirations that lesbians be tolerated in the mainstream.

They believed that unpopular forms of overt self-expression such as wearing masculine garb led not only to danger for lesbians, but also to further alienation from the parent culture, which was especially painful during a time when the middle-class lesbian culture was still in a relatively inchoate form. There were not scores of orgs to join or vast numbers of friendship circles to become a part of. Some lesbians willfully hoped that their differences might be ignored and that they might be accepted among heterosexuals.”

“One couldn’t be part of the middle-class lesbian subculture unless one understood the value of dressing ‘appropriately’: A West Coast university professor remembers that she belonged to an all-gay circle of friends in the SF area — psychologists, teachers, professors, librarians — that held salons and dinner parties regularly, to which most of the women wore navy blue shirts and pumps, almost as much a requisite uniform as butch and femme dress in the gay bars. It was crucial in the middle-class lesbian subculture to behave with sufficient, though never excessive, femininity and not to call attention to oneself as a lesbian in any way. Obvious lesbian behavior on the part of one member might cast disgrace on the entire group.”

“Class wars among lesbians were especially apparent in the bars. In small cities, which often had only 1 lesbian bar, such as the Cave in Omaha, middle-class lesbians when they risked a bar visit found they had to share the turf with butch/femme working-class lesbians, but they drew invisible boundaries. At the Cave the middle-class women, who dressed in conservative Saturday night finery, sat on 1 side of the room, and the working-class women, often in T-shirts, ‘with cigarettes rolled in their sleeves’ and ‘their overdressed femmes with too much lipstick and too high heels,’ sat on the other. ‘The butches would play pool and look though,’ Betty, a high school teacher in Omaha in the 50s, remembers. ‘Some of them were truck driver. Some worked in factories. You’d say hello, but you didn’t get together at all, any more than you did with a truck driver or a factory worker [in normal life].”

“These lesbian subcultures that had proliferated in the 50s continued unchanged through most of the 60s. They were, each in their own way, more conservative than heterosexual society had become during the era of flower children, unisex, sexual revolution, and the civil rights movement. The working-class lesbian subculture maintained its polarities of dress and sexual relating throughout the 60s. Middle-class lesbians generally had no conviction during that decade that, like other minority groups, they could demand their rights. Members of both of the lesbian subcultures accepted that they were persecuted when their status was known, because society seemed always to bully minorities. After all, they had before them the fairly recent examples of Nazi Germany and of the House Un-American Activities Committee. They couldn’t organize to protest, because they saw that the protests of victims were, anyway, not efficacious. And perhaps many of them, lesbians of all classes, internalized on some level the views of the parent culture, which deemed them outcasts and guilty. They had neither the inner conviction nor the requisite knowledge and clout to insist that they were innocent.

However, by the end of the 60s there was some evidence of a shift in lesbian life, especially through the energies of young, college-educated women who began their lesbian careers at that time. These women, coming of age in the 60s with the reawakening of feminism and the militant civil rights movement, were not so willing to accept the style of butch/femme heterogenderality or the intimidated covertness of older lesbians outside the working class. Because they articulately refused both the roles and the secrecy, it looked to the heterosexual world as though lesbians in general had changed: for example, a 1969 SF Chronicle article observed: ‘The notion of role-playing is considered old fashioned among an increasing number of lesbians.’ But the older lesbian subculture was being created by young women who were willing to publicly proclaim their lesbianism and whose upbringing in the unisex 60s made the polarities of masculine and feminine particularly alien to them. Because they rejected the styles and behaviors that their predecessors held sacrosanct, they came into great conflict with the older subcultures. But as more and more young women came out as lesbians in the next decade, it was their style that dominated.”

“Because most of the 19th-century sexologists who first formulated the concept of homosexuality were German, their ideas were more quickly disseminated in Germany than anywhere else and permitted Germans who acknowledged they loved the same sex to identify as a group sooner than those in other countries. Men who practiced same-sex sodomy banded together at the end of the 19th century to form orgs such as the Scientific Humanitarian Committee in order to challenge German laws against sodomy with the ‘scientific’ arguments that the sexologists had provided for them: legislation outlawing sodomy made no sense because those who practiced it were only following a congenital drive. Lesbianism was overlooked by the law since women were generally beneath the law. However, the Scientific Humanitarian Committee welcomed women who loved women into its membership because they swelled the group’s numbers and because the conception of homosexuals as a ‘third sex’ was more persuasive if the phenomenon was seen to exist among those who were ostensibly female as well as those who were ostensibly male. By the turn of the century, German lesbians were actively working with men on homosexual rights issues.

There were no comparable groups in America at that time, since the sexologists’ ideas were promulgated slowly among the lay public outside of Europe.”

The First Queer Orgs

“The 60s altered the temper of America drastically. In the context of widespread interest in liberalization and liberation, the next decade actually saw the growth of not 1 but 2 strong movements for the rights of women who loved women. One included ‘gay’ women who were ‘essentialists’: they believed they were born gay or became so early. They identified their problems as stemming from society’s attitudes about homosexuality. The other was made up of women who called themselves ‘lesbian-feminists’ and who usually believed they ‘existentially’ chose to be lesbians. They identified their problems as stemming from society’s attitudes toward women, and lesbianism was for them a integral part of the solution to their problems.”

“Initially Daughters of Bilitis aimed only to fill the role of a social club outside the gay bar setting. Once the org got under way, however, it almost immediately turned its attention to the problems of lesbian persecution and their solution. DOB and Mattachine had goals that were revolutionary for the 50s, but (despite Mattachine’s radical beginnings) mild by contemporary standards. Their major effort became to educate both the homosexuals and the public with regard to the ways in which the homosexual was just like any other good citizen.

As modest as DOB’s goals were in the 50s, its very establishment in the midst of witch-hunts and police harassment was an act of courage, since members always had to fear that they were under attack, not because of what they did, but merely because of who they were. One early member says that even at DOB events where the group was being addressed by establishment lawyers or psychiatrists, everyone was aware that there was always a possibility of a police raid. ‘We were less fearful of an invasion by street toughs than by the authorities,’ she recalls. And such police invasions did occur. At DOB’s first national convention, in 1960, SF law officers came to hassle the organizers with questions about whether they advocated wearing clothing of the opposite sex, which would have been illegal. (They could’ve answered their own questions by looking around the auditorium, where they would’ve seen middle-class women clad in ‘appropriate’ dress, as the org demanded of its membership.) It’s no wonder that DOB remained small. Most middle-class lesbians, to whom DOB had tried to appeal, had no desire to expose themselves to such harassment.

However, DOB has significance for lesbians not because it was able to attract large numbers or to succeed in its goal of advancing lesbian rights, but rather because of the mere fact that it existed during such dangerous times. Like the later Stonewall rebellion, DOB helped provide a history that would suggest to lesbians in more militant times that they were not always passive collaborators in their oppression, that some fought back, even if only by refusing to deny their own existence.

It wasn’t until the early years of the more liberal 60s that the first lesbian and gay confrontational action was staged by a mixed homosexual group, Homophile League of NY, who picketed an induction center with signs such as ‘If you don’t want us don’t take us, but don’t ruin our lives.’ The idea of picketing caught on quickly among the handful of homosexual activists at that time, since they were witnessing the effectiveness of such tactics by other oppressed groups. In 1964 when the news leaked that Cuba was shamefully mistreating homosexuals, conservatively dressed lesbians and gay men picketed the White House, the Pentagon, and all government installations. They carried signs that asked: ‘Is our government any better?’ As 1 lesbian protester now describes the picketing: ‘We knew we were on the cutting edge of an important beginning. We were tweaking the lion’s tail of government to get our rights.’ Yet as some of the first lesbians to shed their masks and employ a bit of drama in their challenge to the establishment, they not only endured the disdain of many heterosexuals, but they were also ignored by working-class lesbians and generally treated with hostility by middle-class lesbians. Most lesbians reasoned that the less aware the public was of the existence of homosexuality, the more comfortable the homosexual’s life would be. It was still too early for many lesbians to be able to have faith that confrontational tactics might improve their lot.

But there were plenty of indicators that the activists were reading the new public mood correctly. By the end of 1963 the New York Times, which had dealt with homosexuality earlier only in critical terms, began to change its tone. It objectively reported in 1 article the existence of an ‘organized homophile movement — a minority of militant homosexuals that is openly agitating for the removal of legal, social, and cultural discriminations against sexual inverts.’ In reaction to the dogmatic, authoritarian 50s, the public had begun to soften toward diversity, and homosexuals were slowly reaping the benefits along with other minorities. When DOB held its 1966 annual convention in SF, the SF Chronicle ran a 4-column article: ‘SF Greets Daughters.’ Reporters from Metromedia News taped the program highlights, and local radio stations made on-the-hour spot announcements about convention activities. Such publicity not only was indication of more tolerant times, but also served to spread the word to other homosexuals about an organizing community. Although according to a mid-60s study, only 2% of American homosexuals were even aware of the existence of homophile orgs, such mass coverage was helping to increase awareness. It made some older homosexuals ask themselves what they were doing for their own cause, and it encouraged some young ones who were just coming out to develop a new perspective about the possibilities of gay rights.

As the decade progressed, there was palpable evidence of change in big cities. In the mid-60s SF DOB together with Mattachine decided to tackle the most insidious persecutor of homosexuals, organized religion. With the help of a liberal Methodist minister, they were able to organize a Council on Religion and the Homosexual. DOB and Mattachine held a New Year’s Eve ball to raise money for the newly formed council and invited sympathetic clergymen. The police not only infiltrated in plainclothes, but also attempted to intimidate by McCarthy-era tactics, such as having uniformed officers place floodlights at the entrance and photograph all arriving guests. One policeman told a minister, ‘We’ll uphold God’s laws if you won’t.’ These ministers, witnessing firsthand the way the police harassed a minority group, became staunch defenders of that group. The Council on Religion and the Homosexual spread to other parts of America, and major Protestant denominations began to reconsider their positions on homosexuality.

By the end of 1966 the NY Civil Service Commission, which had previously rejected applicants if anything in their appearance, attitude, or actions indicated they were homosexual, began approving homosexual hires. Homosexuals got bolder. In the same year, the North American Conference of Homophile Orgs took the example of the militant black movement to heart and adopted the slogan ‘Gay is Good’ from ‘Black is Beautiful.’ In spring 1967 lesbian and gay students at Columbia organized the Student Homophile League, which soon spread to Cornell, NYU, and Stanford. Although as Rita Mae Brown, who was one of the organizers, recalls, ‘The fur flew. ‘Organized Queers!’ the administration gasped,’ Columbia approved a charter for the group. Even big city police, who’d gotten used to diversity and minority protest, were becoming less belligerent toward homosexuals. In contrast to their harassment a few years earlier, by 1968 the SF police were making efforts to cooperate with homosexual orgs, providing security at public events that was helpful rather than hostile and meeting with the orgs for ‘a mutual exchange of ideas.’

The older homosexual groups such as DOB realized they needed to allow themselves to be swept along with the growing militancy if they wanted to survive. Articles slowly began to appear in The Ladder compared lesbians to other oppressed minorities, and the rhetoric escalated as the decade progressed. By 1968, the relationship was exhorted, in the language of other militant movements, to do battle against the enemies of women in general and lesbians specifically.”

“The riots continued the following night. Fires were started all over the neighborhood, condemnations of the police were read aloud and graffiti appeared on the boarded up windows of the Stonewall Inn exhorting everyone to ‘support gay power’ and to ‘legalize gay bars. These occurrences, which came to be known as the Stonewall Rebellion, marked the first gay riots in history. While the establishment media generally missed their significance — the NY Times relegated the story to 5 inches on page 33, with the obtuse heading, ‘4 Policemen Hurt in Village Raid’ — to many homosexuals, male and female alike, the Stonewall Rebellion was the shot heard round the world.”

“The media had been largely deaf to the police protests of homosexual orgs in the 50s and 60s. But once angry homosexuals stood up for themselves through violent protest, the media and institutional response was much like that toward blacks. Finally there was an attempt to understand the position of homosexuals as an aggrieved minority. While some slight liberalization of attitudes had been slowly building in the media throughout the 60s, suddenly it boomed. In astonishing contrast to a 1966 pronouncement that homosexuality should be given ‘no fake status as minority martyrdom,’ Time announced only 4 months after Stonewall, in an article titled, ‘The Homosexual: Newly Visible, Newly Understood’:

Undue discrimination wastes talents that might be working for society. Police harassment, which still lingers in many cities and more small towns, despite the growing live-and-let-live attitude, wastes manpower and creates unnecessary suffering. The laws against homosexual acts also suggest that the nation cares more about enforcing private morality than it does about preventing violent crimes.

At the same time, the National Institute of Mental Health issued a report urging legalization of private homosexual acts between consenting adults.

Frequently the new public view, at least in some cosmopolitan areas, was more than tolerant — it was truly affirming.”

“For those who were born into the working class, the democratization of higher ed in the 60s meant that they might get an education (and the verbal and analytical skills that went along with it) such as only women of middle-class background might’ve had earlier. Many of those who were born into the middle class purposely declassed themselves in that decade that valued egalitarianism. Thus these young movement lesbians of all classes were able to come together. They were generally comfortable with language and ideas and knew how to organize as working-class lesbians of the previous generation didn’t, and they were confident that they should have rights no less than any other Americans, as middle-class lesbians of the previous generation weren’t. Their militance often outstripped the capacities and understanding of both older working-class and middle-class lesbians, and difficulties emerged between the generations.”

“In Boise (where homosexual witch hunts had been especially rampant during the 50s), when 7 women police officers were discharged because phone tapping on a police dispatch phone designated for nonofficial use revealed they were lesbians, the women sued for $16.5 million. The chief justice district judge declared that the women had been deprived of due process and that their discharge was ‘an abysmal operation.’ He stated he couldn’t understand a city Boise’s size lowering itself to such shenanigans in the 70s.

Activist gay women weren’t happy to settle for tolerance: they demanded equality and full citizenship, and they were willing to be confrontational to get their rights. They were often joined in those confrontations by gay men who were, like them, young, college-educated, and politically aware, and together they became effective lobbyists. They succeeded in getting boards of education in various cities to adopt plans that allowed gay lifestyles to be a part of the family studies curriculum. They were responsible for the passage of gay rights ordinances in 50+ American cities. Their formation of orgs such as the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club in the early 70s, in the interest of pulling more political weight for the gay community, actually led Democratic contenders for that year’s national election — Shirley Chisholm, George McGovern, and Eugene McCarthy — to make astonishing policy statements about equal rights for homosexuals. In 1976 joint efforts between lesbians and gay men resulted in the election of the coordinator of the National Gay Task Force, Jean O’Leary, as the first openly lesbian delegate to the Democratic National Convention. O’Learly declared, with perhaps more optimism than was yet warranted, ‘It’s proven that contrary to being a liability, the appearance of an openly gay person on the ticket is an asset.’ In the following election the Democrats actually included a gay rights plank on the party platform.

Unlike in the McCarthy era, when the more homosexuals were attacked, the more they felt compelled to hide, young radical gay men and lesbians in the 70s understood that the temper of the times allowed support for diversity in America, so that rather than hiding they could use attacks on them to further politicize their cause and publicize their just grievances. The campaigns against Anita Bryant and the Briggs Initiative are prime examples. In 1977, fundamentalist Bryant, who established the antigay Save Our Children org, attacked the Dade Co, FL, Gay Liberation Alliance in her book The Anita Bryant Story: The Survival of Our Nation’s Families and the Threat of Militant Homosexuality. She succeeded in getting the citizens of Dade Co. to repeal a new ordinance that prohibited discrimination against homosexuals in housing and employment. At that point many lesbians pulled together with gay men in the campaign against Bryant, even boycotting orange juice until the entertainer’s contract with FL’s orange grower’s was cancelled. When they heard of Bryant’s intention to open counseling centers across the nation to turn homosexuals into straights, they advocated resurrecting the radical antiwar tactics of the 60s: ‘Just as we helped put the brake on the war through incessant disruption and agitation, we’ll employ those same methods against this new oppression,’ one lesbian mag declared. They even devised plans for using overground political processes for retaliation against Bryant, such as challenging the expected tax exempt status of the counseling centers through the courts. While Bryant’s chief object of attack may have been gay males, clearly many lesbians also saw themselves as embattled and chose to work with gay men against a common enemy.

In the same way, lesbians pulled together with gay men in the 1978 campaign against a proposed CA constitutional amendment by state congressman John Briggs, who succeeded, by riding on the hysteria of Bryant’s Save Our Children, in qualifying his antigay initiative for the CA ballot. The initiative proposed ‘to fire or refuse to hire…any teacher, counselor, aide, or administrator in the public school system who advocates, solicits, imposes, encourages, or promotes private or public homosexual activity…that is likely to come to the attention of students or parents.’ Lesbians working with gay men in the New Alliance for Gay Equality canvassed houses and raised enough money to wage an impressive battle against the initiative, which almost 60% of the voters rejected. As 1 lesbian participant described those pre-election days in 1978, ‘It was wonderful. The gay movement came of age through that cooperation [as] we went door to door together, saying we were gay, asking people to vote against the amendment.’ As a result of the campaigning against the initiative, a flourishing underground political network was established.”

“While some women may have been pressured under the guise of sexual revolution into having sex primarily for a man’s delectation, others were motivated by the desire to explore their own erotic potential and to please themselves, and they were encouraged in that pursuit by popular lit such as Sex and the Single Girl and Cosmopolitan. An end-of-the-decade study by the Institute for Sex Research showed that the number of women engaging in premarital sex had doubled in the 60s. Because nonreproductive sex outside of marriage had become more and more acceptable, it made less social sense than it had earlier to condemn lesbianism on the grounds that lesbian sexual pleasure didn’t lead to reproduction.”

Lesbian-Feminists

“Although hippie culture had permitted women to have their first lesbian experiences, some of them realized, once they discovered radical feminist issues (which had considerable appeal to their radical natures), that hippie culture was sexist and patriarchal. They became disgusted over incidents which demonstrated they were not considered serious members of their groups, such as when hippie males at People’s Park in Berkeley demanded, ‘Free Land, Free Dope, Free Women’ and ignored their existence. The hippie milieu both liberated many women to have their first lesbian experience and pushed them into lesbianism as a way of life in order to escape hippie sexism.

To some of these radical women, lesbianism was also appealing by virtue of the fact that love between women had long suffered under an outlaw status and it appeared to them to be one more necessary step in the face of convention.”

“Some of their radical all-women’s groups eventually evolved into lesbian-feminism. In their conviction that ‘the personal is political,’ they came to believe that lesbian-feminism was appropriate for all women who took themselves seriously and wanted to be taken seriously instead of being ‘fucked over by the patriarchy.’”

“Just as heterosexuals in the past had seen their own variety of love as superior and homosexuality as a manifestation of emotional illness, so the new lesbian-feminists, many of whom had spent all their previous adult years as exclusively heterosexual, now saw homosexuality as the highest form of love and heterosexuality as a form of female masochism.”

“A lesbian is the rage of all women condemned to the point of explosion. She’s a woman who…acts in accordance with her inner compulsion to be a more complete and free human being than her society…cares to allow her…She has not been able to accept the limitations and oppressions laid on her by the most basic role of her society — the female role.

In one sense, the Radicalesbian group’s definition came full circle, back to the early sexologists’ definition of the lesbian as a woman whose behavior isn’t appropriate to ‘womanliness.’ But while the sexologists saw such women as rare and congenitally tainted, the new lesbian-feminists saw them as ubiquitous and heroic. Lesbianism was to the lesbian-feminists a cure-all for the ills perpetuated by sexism. Lesbianism was ‘women creating a new consciousness of and with each other, which is at the heart of women’s lib and the basis for cultural revolution.’ And the best news was that any woman could embrace it.

Lesbian-feminists thus took a revisionist approach to essentialism. It was true, they said, that lesbians were born ‘that way.’ But actually all women were born ‘that way,’ all had the capacity to be lesbians, but male supremacy destroyed that part of most women before they could understand what was happening. Lesbian-feminists emphatically rejected the notion that they were part of a homosexual minority. While the movement didn’t deny the existence of primary lesbians (‘essentialists’ who believed they’d been lesbians for as long as they could remember), it also encouraged women to become elective, ‘existentialist’ lesbians (to make a conscious political choice to leave heterosexuality and embrace lesbianism). Rita Mae Brown, one of the most articulate spokeswomen for lesbianism, declared:

I became a lesbian because the culture that I live in is violently anti-woman. How could I, a woman, participate in a culture that denies my humanity?…To give a man support and love before giving it to a sister is to support that culture, that power system.

To love and support women, Brown said, was lesbian. In that sense, lesbian was revolutionary, and it was imperative that all women who wanted to be feminists stop collaborating with the enemy and join that revolution.

There were probably more lesbians in America during the 70s than any other time in history, because radical feminism had helped redefine lesbianism to make it almost a categorical imperative for all women truly interested in the welfare and progress of other women. As one radical feminist, who divorced her physician husband in 1974 to become a lesbian, characterized it, lesbianism was seen to be ‘the only noble choice a committed feminist could make.’ In this respect, the 70s offer a prime example of sexuality as a social construct. It was demonstrated in that decade how the spirit of an era could influence sexual behavior in large numbers of people at least as much as those other factors that had long been regarded as determining sexuality.”

“As one woman who’d been married before she became a lesbian-feminist in 1970 now recalls:

We investigated the other side of humanity and it became very viable. We weren’t going to give up sex, and we didn’t have to. Emotionally what we had with men wasn’t fulfilling. We weren’t being taken care of in those relationships, and so we stepped out of them, sexually as well as in all other ways. We were bright enough to perceive that it would be decades before men were even in the ballpark.”

“Many ignored such exhortations, but some older women who’d been lesbians long before the birth of the lesbian-feminist movement found it easy to accept the movement’s goals and philosophies, since they’d long lived as feminists without defining themselves as such. The new lesbian chauvinism was a heady experience for them, and they were embraced by the young women in the lesbian-feminist movement with great enthusiasm. They were made to feel they had moved practically overnight from miscreants to historical role models. They remembered well the persecution and the need to hide that characterized their lives in the 50s and throughout much of the 60s — and suddenly the world had changed. ‘It was like living in a time warp,’ one woman remembers. She’d moved from the Midwest to NY in order to have more access to the blossoming new culture:

Suddenly there was women’s music, which I’d never heard before, and it was performed in front of such huge audiences of proud lesbians. There were all of these workshops. There were all-women dances at Columbia. There was a place in the Catskills where hundreds of women took over the entire hotel, running around bars, giving each other massages. And they all wanted to talk to me as a lesbian who’d been around for a while. They respected me. I was 45 and as delirious as a 14-year-old. It was like I’d never lived before.

‘Old gays’ who were willing to venture out of their closets or out of their butch/femme role (which lesbian-feminists disdained) were delighted to change their identity to lesbian-feminist. It was though the new movement was what they’d been waiting for their entire lives, but that it could come to fruition in their day was beyond their sweetest dreams.”

“Lesbian-feminists generally found it disruptive to be with gay males, since to them they didn’t constitute a special category of men: they had been socialized just as badly as straight males and had similar chauvinistic expectations of females. Lesbian-feminists most often chose to disassociate themselves from gay concerns and work on issues that were specifically feminist, because they felt that gay men wanted to use them only as mediators between gay male interests and society. They pointed out with anger that they’d had nothing to do with washroom sex or public solicitation, and yet those were historically the problems on which women’s energies were spent in coalitions with gay men. Lesbian-feminists insisted they were not the ‘ladies auxiliary of the gay movement.’ Their slogan became: ‘We’re angry, not gay.’

For many lesbian-feminists, the problem stemmed from gay men’s lack of a radical analysis over the questions of sex and sex roles. They accused gay men of being merely reformist — defining the issue of homosexuality as a private matter about with whom you sleep — instead of understanding the deeper political issues such as questions of domination and power. They complained that gay reformists pursued solutions that made no basic changes in the system that oppressed lesbians as women and their reforms would keep power in the hands of the oppressors. As lesbian-feminists, they weren’t interested in promoting what they saw as trivial laws and mores that would make it possible for everyone to sleep around freely while maintaining the status quo of women’s powerlessness.

They were especially repelled by gay male culture because they believed that lesbians, as would, wouldn’t naturally do as gay men did, with their dominant-submissive modes of sexual relating and their separation of sex from emotional involvement. Adrienne Rich, in a 1977 Lesbian Pride Rally (an event whose express purpose was to offer lesbians an alternative to the Gay Pride Rally that had commemorated Stonewall throughout the 70s), even blamed all that she saw as wrong in old lesbian culture on the influence of gay males, including ‘the violent, self-destructive world of the gay bars’ and ‘the imitation role stereotypes of ‘butch’ and ‘femme’’ Her cry, along with that of myriads of other women, was for lesbian-feminists to create a self-defined, self-loving, woman-identified culture. Because a general disenchantment with and suspicion of all males was central to lesbian-feminist doctrine, the gay man was naturally seen as being no less an enemy than any other human with a penis, and lesbian-feminists could make no lasting coalition with gay men in a gay revolution.

Although lesbian-feminists saw themselves as feminist rather than gay, they didn’t enjoy an unalloyed welcome in the women’s movement. Betty Friedan, the founder of NOW, the largest org of the women’s movement, even went so far as to tell the New York Times in 1973 that lesbians were sent to infiltrate the women’s movement by the CIA as a plot to discredit feminism. However, despite the displeasure of NOW’s founding mother and her supporters, who called lesbians the ‘lavender menace,’ when a showdown actually took place in NOW, most heterosexual feminists voted on the side of lesbians. In a 1971 resolution, NOW identified lesbians as the frontline troops of the women’s movement and accepted the lesbian-feminist analysis that the reason lesbians had been so harassed by society was that they were a significant threat to the system that subjugates women — the very system that straight women were trying to challenge and destroy by their feminism. The 1971 resolution acknowledged the inherent feminism of lesbianism and the anti-feminism of lesbian persecution: ‘Because she defines herself independently of men, the lesbian is considered unnatural, incomplete, not quite a woman — as though the essence of womanhood was to be identified with men.’ It affirmed that the oppression of lesbians was a legitimate concern for feminism and that ‘a woman’s right to her own person includes the right to define and express her own sexuality and to choose her own lifestyle.’ The resolution passed overwhelmingly and without any change in wording. That victory was a great testimony to lesbian-feminists’ success in communicating their position even to more conservative feminists.”

“Women’s music companies proliferated by the mid-70s and were scattered throughout America and women’s distribution networks were often able to get even establishment stores to set up women’s music sections and FM stations to play women’s music. The effect of women’s music in rousing and consciousness-raising was tremendous, both in private homes and in public settings. At the end of many concerts in the 70s the all-women audiences stood up spontaneously, locked arms, and sang the refrain, which they’d learned through records, from the entertainer’s finale — usually a number that was meant to inspire politically. Through the self-affirming lyrics women were made to feel good about love between women. The music reached out even to lesbians who weren’t a part of the radical community, communicating to them that they weren’t alone and that lesbianism was a noble choice. As 1 woman who became a lesbian before the lesbian-feminist movement and was a teacher throughout the 70s in a conservative C. CA community now recalls:

When I first came out I used to think that a lot of lesbians were misfits, and my lover and I were just exceptions. But the music changed my perspective — like Cris Williamson. Her songs talked about serious issues. I knew for the first time that lesbians didn’t have to be flaky. And it drew me to concerts, which were a thrill. To be in Zellerbach Hall and know that everyone in that room would be spending the night with her female lover! And the variety of people! There was no way you could stereotype who lesbians were. It made me really feel for the first time that there were millions of us in this world. It was power-fid.”

“Although butch-and-femme were ‘p.i.,’ in the lesbian-feminist community everyone looked butch. But the goal was to appear strong and self-sufficient, rather than masculine: no matriarchy could function if its inhabitants had to run or fight in high heels and tight skirts.”

“The wisdom of the day wasn’t only that it was unhealthy for 2 people to own each other, but also that in a quickly evolving world, where personalities evolved quickly as well, it was unrealistic and unloving to force 2 people to be everything to each other. To sanction monogamy, the lesbian-feminists believed, could only bring grief to them as it had to heterosexuals.

Lesbian-feminist were also convinced that monogamy was bad not because it inhibited wild sexual exploration, but rather because it smacked too much of patriarchal capitalism and imperialism. It was men’s way of keeping women enslaved. People aren’t things to own, lesbian-feminists said. No lesbian should want to have the right to imprison another human being emotionally or sexually. The most popular lesbian-feminist novels, such as Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle (1973), reflected the community’s distrust of monogamy, which the authors presented as inhibiting a free exploration of self and detracting from one’s commitment to the lesbian-feminist community, since it led to nesting rather than involvement in political work. Some lesbian-feminists (particularly those in the larger cities) even believed it a duty to ‘Smash Monogamy,’ as their buttons proclaimed, sporting a triple women’s symbol and rejecting the notion of the lesbian couple.”

“Although their belief was born of idealism, few women could endure it for long, and by the 80s nonmonogamy became passe in most lesbian-feminist communities.

But the sexual issue that tyrannized the most over lesbian-feminists who wanted to be politically correct in the 70s was bisexuality. Ironically, at a time when bisexuality became quite acceptable to liberals, it became unacceptable among lesbian-feminists. Jill Johnston called it a ‘fearful compromise’ because half the bi women’s actions were ‘a continued service to the oppressor.’ Women were who were bi were accused of ‘ripping off’ lesbians — getting energy from them so that they could ‘take it back to a man.’ Bi women were the worst traitors to the cause, lesbian-feminists believed, because they knew they were capable of loving women and neglected their duty to help build the Lesbian Nation. Bisexuals were especially suspect because they received all the heterosexual privileges — such as financial and social benefits — whenever they chose to act heterosexually. Although lesbian-feminists recognized that human nature was indeed bisexual, they pointed out that the revolution hadn’t yet reached its goals and women who practiced bisexuality were ‘simply leading highly privileged lives that…undermine the feminist struggle.’ It was suggested that, at the very least, those bisexuals who couldn’t ignore their heterosexual drives should put the bulk of their energies into the political and social struggles around lesbian-feminism and keep secret from the outside world their straight side so that they wouldn’t be tempted to fall back on their heterosexual privileges.

Lesbian Nation of the 70s was far-flung across the country, yet the abundant lit that reached everywhere and the influence of hippie and Left values guaranteed a certain amount of conformity in doctrine, whether among lesbian-feminists in GA, Boston, ID, or CA. But the list of what was politically correct and politically incorrect grew as the decade progressed. The most committed lesbian-feminists preferred to believe that there was nationwide unity and general consensus with regard to their principles. That belief seemed to mandate an inflexible dogma that was often violated by human diversity among them and necessarily led to frequent unhappy conflicts.”

Porn and Sex

“Lesbians generally didn’t have partners who would pron them on to greater sexual looseness. Thus, in the midst of rampant sexuality among straights and gay men, lesbians in the 70s either felt the new ‘sexualization’ to be irrelevant to their old lifestyles or — as lesbian-feminists — were too busy designing the Lesbian Nation to turn their attention to what they generally regarded as the triviality of sex.

Not only were lesbians outside of committed relationships far less sexual than gay male and straight singles, but even within long-term relationships they tended to be much less sexual, as stats gathered during the 70s for a major study of both straight and gay American couples confirmed. For example, only 1/3 of the lesbian couples in relationships of 2+ years had sex once a week or more (compared to 2/3 of their straight counterparts), and almost half the lesbians in long-term relationships (10 years+) had sex less than once a month (compared to only 15% of their heterosexual counterparts).”

“Lesbians who were cultural feminists were very uncomfortable with the ‘sexualization’ of America in the 70s, because they believed that it served men’s cruder appetites and put pressure on women to behave in ways that were not intrinsic to them. When the Supreme Court declared in 1970 that not only was porn not harmful and not a factor in the cause of crime but was actually beneficial because it served to educate and release inhibitions, cultural feminists drew the first of their battle lines. They maintained that the ‘liberalism’ of supporters of porn was only a mask for sexism that permitted even those who were supposedly sympathetic to women’s rights to consider women’s exploitation and suffering as ‘titillating.’ They formed groups such as Women Against Violence in Porn and the Media, and Women Against Violence Against Women, which staged Take Back the Night marches and conducted angry tours of places such as Times Square to expose the thriving pron industry and ignite women to fight against it. Their efforts led to the drafting of a model law that was adopted first by Minneapolis and then by other cities (though later it was found unconstitutional), declaring porn a form of sex discrimination and making traffickers in porn legally liable.

And so, when some lesbians at the end of the decade began encouraging lesbian interest in porn and even strip shows and certain forms of violent (albeit consensual) sex, cultural feminists felt betrayed and furious. It was to them as though the enemy — male-identified perverts in dyke clothing — had all the while been living in their own camp and were now attempting to weaken the ranks by disseminating propaganda in support of everything the cultural feminists most despised: porn, sexual role playing (including S/M and butch/femme relationships), and even public sex.

The cultural feminists were unimpressed by the argument of lesbian sexual radicals that until women are free to explore their own sexuality any way they wish, they’ll never be truly free. They believed that the sexual radicals’ pursuit of ways to ‘spice up’ lesbian sexuality, such as porn and the sexual role playing of S/M or butch/femme, validated the system of patriarchy, in which one person has power over another or objectifies her. They insisted that such pursuits were counter to the vision of the world that feminists had been striving to create and that it was the responsibility of lesbians to help build the new world upon a model of equal power such as is, anyway, the most ‘natural’ to lesbian relationships.

Cultural feminists believed that lesbian sex must be consistent with the best of lesbian ethics. They acknowledged that images of domination, control, and violence, which have been man’s sexual stimuli, have become a part of everyone’s cultural environment, and thus have shaped women’s sexual fantasies and desires. But they also insisted that lesbians should permit themselves only those sexual interests that reflect superior female ideals. They wished to deconstruct harmful desire that were socially constructed, instead of giving into them by wanting to ‘explore them.’ They feared that the lesbian sexual radicals were not only making a big deal out of sexuality, which should be incidental to lesbianism, but were also deluding themselves and other women into believing that male images, fantasies, and habits were desirable for women, too.”

“Many lesbians were curious about their ideas and briefly excited about the novelty of the notion that they had a right to the same kind of carefree sexuality that men have always claimed for themselves and were at last pretending to let straight women claim in more recent times. But those lesbians were seldom able to maintain an interest in constructing a sexuality that departed too much from their socialization. The lesbian sexual radicals who could do so over a period of time remained a small minority within a minority. And by the end of the 80s the AIDS scare had discouraged many women from attempting greater sexual experimentation that would challenge their socialization.

The sexual radicals considered themselves revolutionaries and contrasted their own sexual revolution to that of the 70s. That earlier revolution they saw as a ‘rip-off of women,’ since it did little other than make women more available to men, whether through counterculture gang bangs and groupie sex or pressure to ‘put out’ in more conventional straight relationships. They wished their own sexual revolution to be by and truly for women. They wanted to convince lesbians of the importance of enjoying the most imaginative and exciting sex their minds and bodies could construct. In their conviction that lesbains have a personal right to complete fulfillment of sexual desires and that women’s sexual liberation is a crucial component of women’s freedom, they created a panoply of new lesbian sexual institutions: porn videos and magazines, clubs devoted to sexual practices such as S/M, stores that specialized in products intended to promote female sexual enjoyment. They saw lust as a positive virtue, an appreciation of one’s own and others’ sexual dynamism.

Their success was limited primarily because lesbians are raised like other women in this culture. They’re taught that what’s most crucial about sexuality is that it leads to settling down in marriage. Not having the official heterosexual landmarks of engagement and wedding, lesbians create their own, often telescoping those events in time toward the goal of establishing a home. Joann Loulan, a lesbian sexologist, jokes: ‘The lesbian date is like an engagement…[and] once you have sex with her you get married.’ Despite the 70s’ ideological push toward nonmonogamy in the lesbian-feminist community, most lesbians continued to idealize monogamy, although the pattern tended to be serial monogamy —that is, relationships last for a number of years, break up, and both women get involved in a new monogamous relationship. In their approach to sexuality they’ve been much more like straight women than gay men. When both parties in a couple are female, it appears that the effects of female socialization are usually doubled, lesbianism notwithstanding. While a few lesbians have been able to overcome that socialization, most haven’t yet been able to.”

Typically, in a 1987 survey among Boulder lesbians, fewer than 10% had ever experimented with sexual activities like S/M or bondage, 75% said they’d never been involved in sexual role playing, and only 1% thought casual sex was ideal for them. Clearly, in the midst of such sexual conservatism, lesbian sex radicals couldn’t have had an easy time promoting their theories about the path to equality and happiness.”

“By design (and not simply by chance, as may have happened in the 50s), in most aspects of their lives, such as household responsibility or decision-making, there were few clear divisions along traditional lines between neo-butches and -femmes. Neo-butch/femme often boiled down merely to who made the first move sexually, and for many women that was its primary value. To other women it meant not even that once they began exploring roles such as ‘butch bottom’ or ‘femme top.’ Too much had happened for history to simply repeat itself. The male hippies of the 60s had challenged the old concept of masculine: a man could wear his hair to his shoulders and be opposed to violence and wear jewelry. The feminists of the 70s had challenged the old concept of feminine: a woman could be efficient and forceful and demand a place in the world. Except in the most recalcitrant, there was little that remained of the simplistic ideas of gender-appropriate behavior and appearance. And lesbians, who’ve historically been at the forefront of feminism (in their choice to lead independent lives, if nothing else), couldn’t easily accept the old fashions in images and behaviors. Most would’ve had a hard time taking these notions seriously. For that reason, butch and femme existed best in the 80s in the sexual arena, which invites fantasy and the tension of polarities.”

“The institutions that lesbian sexual radicals devised to expand avenues of lesbian sexual expression were either short-lived or greatly modified to reflect values that are, ironically, not very different from those promoted by the cultural feminists. For example, in the early 80s, lesbian Xanadus became a reality, but their success was limited. JoAnna remembers attending the Sutro Baths, an SF swingers’ bathhouse that had opened its doors exclusively to lesbians one night a week: ‘6 or 7 women walked into this large group room a few minutes after I arrived. One of them shouted, ‘Let’s get down!’ and everyone started doing everything. Everywhere you looked there were women doing it, either in couples or in large groups.’ Such a scene was precisely what Brown and the sexual radicals who followed her had envisioned, but this initial enthusiasm for casual sex wasn’t long maintained among lesbians. Clare, who attended the Sutro a few months later, shortly before it discontinued its lesbian nights, says that she found only 8 or 10 women in the orgy room, sitting around in their towels, talking. ‘Nobody was even kissing. We ended up playing a nude game of pool.’ There were apparently not enough lesbians who felt comfortable about public sex and would attend often enough to make the venture economically feasible for the Sutro and the few other bathhouses that attempted lesbian nights, and the AIDS scare soon militated against further endeavors by the baths.”

“It seems that to this point, female upbringing, which inculcates in most women a certain passivity and reticence, has made it difficult for many lesbians to admit or encourage within themselves an unalloyed aggressive interest in sex outside of love and commitment. It’s not surprising that as women they have problems even admitting such interests. Kinsey reported that 77% of the males he interviewed acknowledged being aroused by depictions of explicit sex, but only 22% of the females admitted to such arousal. A more recent study gives a possible insight into this discrepancy between male and female response to porn. Both men and women were exposed to explicitly erotic audiotapes while they were connected to instruments that measured their physical arousal. The instruments actually recorded no difference in arousal rate between men and women, but while all the male subjects who were aroused admitted arousal, only half the aroused female subjects admitted arousal.”

The 80s

“For her it was primarily camp and fantasy and didn’t necessarily have to do with other aspects of her personality. Nor were those roles limited in themselves, she pointed out. In the 80s one could, for example, be a femme who was the sexual dominator and ‘ran the fuck’ on a butch who submissively acted out the femme’s desires.”

“Some reintroduced makeup and sexy clothes into the most visible part of the lesbian community. They were far less distinguishable from straight women than their 70s counterparts had been. The new young lesbians created images such as that of the ‘glamour dyke’ or ‘lipstick lesbian,’ and their frequently glamorous self-presentation may’ve been responsible for the beginning of a new ‘lesbian chic’ that seems to be making bisexuality as provocative in some sophisticated circles as it had been in the 20s.

Through those images lesbianism could once again be associated with a kind of super-sexy rebelliousness and allure. As in the 20s, female entertainers by the end of the 80s began to tantalize their audiences with hints of bisexuality. Madonna and Sandra Bernhard, for example, let it be known on network TV that they were an ‘item’ at the Cubby Hole, a NY lesbian bar. They even incorporated lesbian material into their shows. Sandra Bernhard reinterpreted the song ‘Me and Mrs. Jones’ to be a story of a surreptitious lesbian affair and ended with the outrageously gleeful exclamation, ‘The women are doin’ it for themselves!’ Lily Tomlin and longtime companion and writer Jane Wagner made lesbians the heroes of half Tomlin’s skirts in her virtuoso one-woman performances. Rock singer Melissa Etheridge skyrocketed to fame with her totally androgynous performance style and dress. Country singer K.D. Lang proudly declared of her own bisexual appeal, ‘Yeah, sure, the boys can be attracted to me, the girls can be attracted to me, your mother…your uncle, sure. It doesn’t really matter to me.’

Of course small enclaves of older lesbian lifestyles continued to exist as new ones were being formed. But the most visible lesbian community changed its character so that in the 80s it was made up in good part of women who were far less separated from the mainstream in their appearance and outlook than had been the butches and femmes of the 50 sand 60s and the lesbian-feminists of the 70s. Perhaps many women who made up the dominant visible community of the 80s intuited that less militance was appropriate to conservative times, and they were reinforced by the inclusion in their community of more and more lesbians whose economic status, lifestyles, and philosophy rendered them much more moderate than their lesbian-feminist predecessors. But together with the growing moderation of the more visible lesbian community, it grew in other ways as well. It came to include many more lesbians of color, women who ‘didn’t look like lesbian,’ old people, gay men, and children of lesbian mothers. Despite this greater diversity, and some very polarizing issues such as the lesbian sex wars, the community was considerably more successful in fostering unity in the 80s than was the visible community that had been dominated by lesbian-feminists in the 70s.”

“Success, power, professionalism, which had been tools of the enemy in the eyes of the radicals, became signs of accomplishment to the more moderate community of the 80s. Striving to ‘achieve a level of equality’ ceased to be feared as divisive and inegalitarian. The greater acceptance of ‘professionalism’ was connected with attitudes toward class, which were also confused in the more moderate 80s. Middle-class lesbians became more prominent in the visible community, young women of middle-class background no longer felt they must declass themselves to join the community, and many of the women who had been young, declared radicals in the 70s changed their socioeconomic status. Olivia record company has served as a revealing barometer of these changes. This company that had started business in the 70s, enchanted with the classless ideals of lesbian-feminism, by the end of the 80s was sponsoring luxury cruises to the Caribbean for lesbians.”

“Those who remembered the earlier years sometimes feared that all had been in vain. They bitterly regretted the demise of their dreams for an Amazon world. Looking superficially at the new face of the community, what they saw was a disappearance of the old concerns and institutions and an interest among lesbians in resembling mainstream society. They despaired, for example, that in Austin, where women’s music had been such a living force in the 70s, concerts were losing money in the 80s, and young lesbians were buying mainstream music.”

“In the 80s, radicalism was defunct, but in its place there was a new lesbian and gay male unity, an increased acceptance of homosexuality in liberal circles, and even some manifestation of a growing political clout in that part of the mainstream that wasn’t insensitive to the civil rights of homosexuals.”

“It appears to be warranted to conclude that the demeanor of the visible community changed primarily because of economic reasons. There were in the 80s more women in the American workforce who were pursuing careers than ever before, and more opportunities were opening up to them. Since lesbians have generally attained higher levels of education than straight women because they knew they had to be self-supportive and they seldom have multiple children who could interfere with career advancement, they're more likely to be successful professionally. There was a significant increase in the number of lesbians who reached middle class status through their work and who would’ve had difficulty denying their middle-class socioeconomic position and values in the 80s. Those women had fewer fears than their middle-class lesbian predecessors about becoming part of the visible lesbian community. Thus their values gave a tenor to that community that connected it to the mainstream much more closely than it had been connected since lesbianism first became a subculture in America.”

“At the 1988 SF Gay Pride March a contingent of old lesbians chanted as they marched, ’2, 4, 6, 8, how do you know your grandma’s straight?’”

“There still existed in the late 80s some enclaves of separatists who insisted that in rejecting separatism the rest of the lesbian world had ‘lost its vision.’ However, most of the lesbian community felt by the end of the decade that while separatism may be effective for a specific struggle at a certain time, as a lifestyle it attests to a ‘failure of global vision.’ They now insisted that it’s simply not possible for lesbians to separate themselves from the problems of the world. In growing numbers, they proclaimed in lesbian publications that a lesbian is also a complex human being, with attachments often to fathers, sons, male friends, and straight women, and separations had failed to speak to all of the lesbian's complexity. Separation came to be identified with bigotry by some lesbians because it ‘judged people by gender and class rather than as individuals.’ The greatest contact most lesbians had with separatism by the late 80s was a temporary one, at the huge all-women’s music festivals around the country. For them it became a fantasy world of how long may have been in an Amazon nation but no longer a model for how life could or should be in America as it approaches the end of the century.

Separatism would probably have died in the lesbian community just by virtue of its dogmatism, which choked off the possibilities of all relationships and interests outside of a narrow circle. But the AIDS crisis, which profoundly affected gay men in the 80s, demanded soul-searching on the part of lesbians that not only led for many to a reconciliation with the men but also brought about a political and social unity on a scale much larger than ever before. Many lesbians felt called upon to take an active role in dealing with the crisis. As a blood drive ad sponsored by a lesbian group put it (in language reminiscent of WWII patriotic drives), ‘Our boys need our blood…Stand by our brothers in fighting the AIDS epidemic.’ In the face of such an overwhelming threat to a segment of the population that has ties with lesbians, in terms of common enemies if nothing else, many lesbians felt they had no choice but to put aside the luxury of separatism.

There were lesbians who believed that gay men brought AIDS on themselves because of their promiscuous lifestyle. Some proclaimed that if a fatal disease had threatened to wipe out the lesbian community, gay men wouldn’t be putting their resources and energy into helping lesbians as many lesbians felt obliged to help gay men. ‘I feel resentful,’ one said, ‘because this crisis already overshadows many others, and because men’s issues always take precedence over women’s…What about women’s health? What about lesbian health services?’ But such a response didn’t reflect many in the visible lesbian community who put a vast effort into raising money, giving blood, and serving as volunteers for projects that assigned them to make dinner, walk dogs, or go shopping for people with AIDS. Lesbians provided such remarkable support that a gay moviemaker, David Stuart, felt moved to produce a film of thanks called Family Values, a ‘salute for us gay men to you lesbians’ spotlighting women who brought gay men into their homes so that they could die surrounded by peace and love.

The film’s name, with its ironic thrust at homophobes who claim that homosexuality is anti-family, was apt. The crisis did create a sense of family among many lesbians and gay men that was missing during the 70s. As 1 woman explained the metamorphisis in lesbian-gay relationships, ‘When a whole community is dying you drop a lot of the in-fighting.’ For many lesbians, loving acquaintances through AIDS made them reexamine how they wanted to live the rest of their lives and to aconclude that the antagonism between the 2 linked communities was counterproductive and tragic. They undertook the battle against AIDS as though they were fighting for members of their very own family.

Although AIDS wasn’t the anticipated next step in their march toward liberation, many lesbians were convinced in the 80s that the strength of the contemporary lesbian and gay movement would be judged by its response to AIDS. They believed that the right wing, which used AIDS as an excuse to attack all homosexuals, aimed to wipe out lesbians along with gay men, even if only as an afterthought. They quoted from homophobic lit such as a pamphlet issued by a group called Dallas Doctors Against AIDS: ‘Such a severe public health concern must cause the citizenry of this country to do everything in their power to smash the homosexual movement in this country to make sure these kinds of acts are criminalized.’ Lesbians could’ve responded to statements by such hate groups, which claim that AIDS is God’s judgment on homosexuality, by saying that lesbians must then be God’s elect, since the incidence of AIDS among them is far lower than among heterosexuals. But they generally chose to make common cause whit gay men rather than distinguishing themselves. The right wing’s poisonous attack on homosexuality because of AIDS reminded lesbians that there really were enemies out there they’d forgotten about and they couldn’t afford the complacency of turning their backs on their battle allies.Despite the loss of many gay male leaders through AIDS, the united homosexual community took the crisis as a rallying point and proved itself to be at the apex of strength in terms of its ability to mobilize and fight back.

While compassion was instrumental in bringing about the reconciliation between lesbians and gay men, the growing realization that collectively they had greater power with which to fight their common enemies also led to their making common cause. Their potential for collective power was dramatized nowhere so much as the 1987 National March on Washingotn for Lesbian and GAy Rgihts. The march far exceeded the expected 250k aprticipants, drwaing 650,000, which made it the largest civil rights march in American histroy, far surpassing the 1963 Civil Rights March and the 1969 Vietnam Moratorium demonstration.”

“In April 1990 a group of NY ACT-UP lesbians and gay men who were interested in doing direct action around broader lesbian and gay issues formed Queer Nation, which almost immediately spread to other coastal cities such as Boston and SF. Although gay men were the most active in establishing it, they clearly wanted the participation of lesbians, and hence carefully selected the word ‘queer’ to serve as an umbrella term — a synonym not only for ‘faggots’ and ‘fairies,’ but also for ‘lezzies’ and ‘dykes.’ At writing only approximately 20% of Queer Nation is lesbian, but press coverage of the group’s activities often focuses on the women in Queer Nation who seem very committed to its principles.

The rhetoric and tactics of Queer Nation hark back to those of earlier black militants and lesbian feminists. The name Queer Nation itself is reminiscent, of course, of Lesbian Nation. ‘Straight’ is their code word for oppressive mainstream culture equal to ‘white’ or ‘partriarchal’ in the earlier groups.”

“More militant tactics are in the planning page. For example, Queer Nation is in the process of organizing ‘Pink Panther’ vigilante groups that could respond physically and immediately to gay- and lesbian-bashing. ‘Queers Bash Back’ is their slogan. They’re also exploring ways to express economic power such as a campaign to ask businesses to sign an antidiscrimination statement of principles, which would then entitle those businesses to display a pink triangle or a rainbow flag sticker so lesbians and gay men could shop selectively.”

“Jerardine: Aliciane! I’ve just had a vision — of the future!…In a thousand years or so, why, the population will be tremendous, don’t you imagine? I mean, everybody living to 285 and so on? Well, now picture it: every place just like China, say, or India. Stacks of people and not enough food and not enough places to live. So — the psychologists, etc. will all begin telling everybody it’s a sign of a definite inferiority complex to want to be having children all the time…that no really well balanced individual would be so unhappy with [herself] and [her] kind anyway that [she’d] so much as think of falling for anybody of the opposite sex!…Can you imagine it? All the poor heteros slinking about furtively? Pretending they were only friends and all that? Why, why, y’know, in time there might be laws against it!

N.M. Kramer, The Hearth and the Strangeness, 1956"