32. “Readers Respond,” The Ladder (October 1958), 3(1):30.
33. Suzanne Prosin, “The Concept of the Lesbian: A Minority in Reverse,” The Ladder (July 1962), 6(10):5–22.
34. Dinner parties described in personal interview with Mildred, age 58, Berkeley, Calif, August 10, 1987.
35. Personal interview with Jane, age 54, Los Angeles, April 7, 1987.
36. Interview with two women who lived through the McCarthy era, in Sasha Gregory Lewis, Sunday’s Women: A Report on Lesbian Life Today (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), pp. 58–59 and written communication from Nora, age 67, Los Angeles, March 6, 1988.
37. Personal interview with Jeanette, age 63, San Francisco, August 11, 1987.
38. Personal interview with Betty, age 66, Omaha, Neb., October 11, 1988.
39. Sten Russell in One, Febuary 1954, pp. 18–19. Personal interview with Jane, age 54, Los Angeles, April 7, 1987. Barbara Gittings interview, in Kay Tobin and Randy Wicker, eds., The Gay Crusaders (1972; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975), p. 209.
40. Regarding violence against lesbians see interviews with Greenwich Village lesbians from the 1950s in video, Neighborhood Voices, producer Amber Hollibaugh, 1985. Typescript of interview with Sandy K., New York Lesbian Herstory Archives, file: 1950s. William Fitzgerald, “Psuedo-Heterosexuality in Prison and Out: A Study of the Lower Lower Class Black Lesbian,” doctoral diss., City University of New York, 1977, p. 121.
41. Personal interview with Jackie, age 60, San Francisco, August 11, 1987.
42. Marlin Prentiss, “The Feminine Viewpoint,” One (April 1955), 3(4): 37–40.
43. Julie Smith, “The Lesbian’s Story: How Does Girl Meet Girl?,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 1, 1969, p. 17.
8. “Not a Public Relations Movement”
1. History of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee in John Lauritsen and David Thorstad, The Early Homosexual Rights Movement, 1864–1935 (New York: Times Change Press, 1974), and Lillian Faderman and Brigitte Eriksson, Lesbians in Germany: 1890–1920 (Tallahassee, Fla: Naiad Press, 1990).
2. Editorial, “The Homosexual Vote,” The Ladder (July 1960), 4(10):4–5.
3. Mattachine’s early years are discussed in John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the U.S., 1940–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). Personal interview with Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, San Francisco, August 14, 1987. DOB’s early years are also recorded in the organization’s magazine, The Ladder.
4. Personal interview with Barbara Gittings, Philadelphia, October 7, 1987. Convention discussed by Del Martin, panel: “Daughters of Bilitis: The First National Lesbian Organization,” Berkshire History of Women Conference, Wellesley College, Mass., June 19, 1987.
5. Picket signs in Andrea Weiss and Greta Schiller, Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community (Tallahassee, Fla: Naiad Press, 1988). Personal interview with Barbara Gittings, cited above.
6. New York Times (Western Edition), December 27, 1963. Although media coverage on homosexuality increased greatly during the mid-1960s, it was not always positive or neutral. For example, Time Magazine ran an essay on homosexuality calling for more tolerance but admonishing that homosexuality deserves “no fake status as minority martyrdom … and, above all, no pretense that it is anything but a pernicious sickness”: “The Homosexuals,” Time, June 21, 1966, pp. 40–41. DOB convention discussed in Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, Lesbian/ Woman (New York: Bantam, 1972), p. 224. Statistics from Edwin M. Schur, Crimes Without Victims: Deviant Behavior and Public Policy (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), p. 97.
7. Personal interview with Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, cited above. See also “The Church and the Homosexual: A New Rapport,” The Ladder, September 1964, pp. 9–13.
8. New York City Civil Service Commission action reported in New York Times, January 7, 1967, p. 1. NACHO discussed in D’Emilio, pp. 197–99. Rita Mae Brown, Plain Brown Rapper (Oakland, Calif: Diana Press, 1976). Police discussed in Roxanne Thayer Sweet, “Political and Social Action in Homophile Organziations,” doctoral diss. University of California, Berkeley, 1968.
9. See, e.g., Lee Ebreo, “A Homosexual Ghetto?,” The Ladder (Dec. 1965), 10(3)18; “U.S. Homophile Movement Gains National Strength,” The Ladder (April 1966), 10(7):4–5; Barbara Grier (Marilyn Barrow), “The Least of These,” The Ladder, October/November 1968, pp. 30–33; and Martha Shelley, “Readers Respond,” The Ladder, April/ May 1969, pp. 42–3.
10. Editorial, “A Suggested Policy: Confrontation and Implementation,” Homophile Action League Newletter, 1:4 (Feb. 1969), pp. 1–2.
11. New York Times, June 29, 1969, p. 33. The second night of riots received similarly unexcited coverage in the New York Times: “Police Again Rout ‘Village’ Youths,” June 30, 1969, p. 22. Papers such as the Village Voice were more perceptive: see July 3, 1969, p. 1. See also New York Mattachine Newsletter, July 1969, pp. 21–25 and August 1969, pp. 1–6. The newsletter decribed the riots, in which many gay male transvestites participated, in camp terms such as “the hairpin drop heard round the world.”
12. Gay liberation speaker quoted in Sidney Abbott and Barbara Love, Sappho Was a Right-On Woman: A Liberated View of Lesbianism (New York: Stein and Day, 1970), p. 160.
13. 1966 and 1969 Time articles cited above. NIMH report discussed in the 1969 article. Despite such liberalization, the view of homosexuality as deleterious still continued among many professionals: see, e.g., Linda Norris, “A Comparison of Two Groups in a Southern State Women’s Prison: Homosexual Behavior vs. Non-Homosexual Behavior,” Psychological Reports (1974), 34:75–78.
14. Julie Smith, “The Lesbian’s Story: How Does Girl Meet Girl?” San Francisco Chronicle, July 1, 1969, p. 17.
15. Ann Lisa, “Boycott Leonardo’s,” Gay Sunshine, October 1970, pp. 1–2.
16. New York DOB demonstration reported in Lesbian Tide, December 1971, p. 12.
17. Minneapolis and Milwaukee events reported in Proud Woman (March/ April 1972), 2(12):3, 8. Boise case reported in Gaysweek (Dec. 25, 1978), 96:1.
18. School board accomplishments discussed in “School Is Not a Gay Place to Be, but It’s Getting Better in San Francisco,” in Growing Up Gay: A Youth Liberation Pamphlet (Ann Arbor, Mich.: 1978), p. 23. O’Leary victory reported in The Advocate (May 5, 1976), 189:6.
19. Anita Bryant, The Anita Bryant Story: The Survival of Our Nation’s Families and the Threat of Militant Homosexuality (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell, 1977). Editorial, “The Pink Triangle Ranch,” Lesbian Tide (July/ August 1978), 8(5):27.
20. News of the anti-Briggs campaign in Lesbian Tide, from July to December 1978. “Gay movement came of age” from personal interview with Susie Bright, age 29, San Francisco, August 11, 1987. Seattle battle reported in Off Our Backs (December 1978), 8(11). The aftermath of the slaying of supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone in San Francisco also helped to unite the lesbian and gay community. After thousands rioted over the lenient sentence given to the killer, Dan White, the protestors came together in a peaceful memorial birthday party for Harvey Milk. A speaker told the gathering, “Last night gay men and lesbian women showed the world we’re angry and are on the move…. Tonight we are going to show them that we are building a strong community.” A large crowd of lesbians and gay men also gathered in Greenwich Village on the day of the rioting, carrying signs declaring “Lesbians and Gay Men Fight Back” and proclaiming solidarity with male and female homosexuals everywhere: San Francisco Chronicle, May 22, 1979, p. 1, and May 23, 1979, pp. 1, 4, 5.
21. Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl (New York: Pocket Books, 1962), p. 240. New attitudes toward sex discussed in Barbara Ehrenreich et al., ReMaking Love: The Feminization of Sex (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1986), pp. 80–81. Institute for Sex Research quoted in Martin and Lyon, Lesbian/Woman, p. 85.
22. Ann Roiphe, “Who’s Afraid of Lesbian Sex?,” Vogue, August 1977, pp. 150 +.
23. “The Homosex
ual: Newly Visible, Newly Understood,” Time, October 3, 1969, pp. 56–57.
24. Personal interview with Clare, age 35, San Francisco, August 5, 1987.
25. Feminists and the Left discussed in Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the Left (New York, 1979); Martha Shelley, “Notes of a Radical Lesbian,” in Robin Morgan, ed., Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement (New York: Random House, 1970), pp. 306–11; Barbara Leon, “Separate to Integrate,” Redstockings: Feminist Revolution (n.p., 1975), pp. 139–44; Ginny Berson, “Only by Association,” The Furies (June/July 1972), 1(5):5–6. The Left of the early ’70s was generally homophobic, although there were some exceptions. The Workers World Party was represented in a 1970 Gay Pride parade with members carrying signs that read “Say No To Racism and AntiGay Bigotry”: see photographic retrospective in “Lesbians and Gay Men Fight Back,” Workers World (October 15, 1987), 29(41): supplement. By 1971 the Socialist Workers Party, impressed by the serious struggle of gay militants, came out for “total unconditional support for the gay liberation movement,” but most leftist groups did not share their position: see e.g. Holly Near incident reported in Big Mama Rag (September 1978), 6(8):8. For lesbian rejection of the Left see also Charlotte Bunch, “Out Now!” The Furies (June/July 1972), 1(5):12–13.
26. Ti-Grace Atkinson, “Lesbianism and Feminism,” in Phyllis Birkby et al., eds, Amazon Expedition: A Lesbian-Feminist Anthologym (Albion, Calif.: Times Change Press, 1973), pp. 11–14.
27. For similarities between lesbian and feminist goals and interests see editorial (comments by staff members on how women’s liberation has changed their lives), Women: A Journal of Liberation (1972), 2(4): inside front cover. New York Radicalesbians, “Woman-Identified-Woman” (1970; reprinted in Lesbians Speak Out [Oakland, Calif.: Women’s Press Collective]), pp. 87–89.
28. The ability of all women to be lesbian is discussed in Jane B., “Me, a Lesbian?,” The Ladder (1972), 16:31–32; Loretta Ulmschneider, “Bisexuality,” in Nancy Myron and Charlotte Bunch, eds., Lesbians and the Women’s Movement (Baltimore: Diana Press, 1975); J. Antonelli, “What Is a Lesbian?,” Sinister Wisdom, Fall 1977, pp. 57–59. Adrienne Rich expanded on these ideas in Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Threat (Only Women Press, 1981), suggesting that the term “lesbian” should embrace many more forms of relating between women, including sharing a rich inner life, bonding against male tyranny, giving and receiving practical and political support, etc. Terms “primary” and “elective” lesbians used in Barbara Ponse, Identities in the Lesbian World: The Social Construction of Self (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978). Rita Mae Brown, “Take a Lesbian to Lunch,” in Plain Brown Rapper (Oakland, Calif: Diana Press, 1976), and “The Shape of Things to Come,” Women: A Journal of Liberation (1972), 2(4):44~46.
29. Personal interview with Lisa, age 49, New York, October 12, 1987.
30. Elizabeth Wilson, “I’ll Climb the Stairway to Heaven: Lesbians in the 1970s,” in Sue Cartledge and Joanna Ryan, eds., Sex and Love (London: Woman’s Press, 1983), pp. 180–95. Wilson suggests that many of the young women who elected to become lesbians through radical feminist dogma were doomed to disillusionment and eventually returned to heterosexuality. See also Zira Defries, “Political Lesbianism and Sexual Politics,” American Academy of Psychoanalysts Journal (January 1978), 6(1): 71–78. and Zira Defries, “Pseudohomosexuality in Feminist Students,” American Journal of Psychiatry (April 1976), 133(4):400–404. Two-thirds of the lesbian-feminist students Defries treated returned, more or less, to heterosexuality. But it must be noted that those students were self-selected, having felt conflicts about their lesbian relationships to begin with.
31. Personal interview with Z. Budapest, age 48, Oakland, Cal., August 1,1988. For popular affirmations in the 1960s and 1970s of sex between women see Ann Koedt, “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” (1969; reprinted in Notes from the Second Year, p. 41) and Jill Johnston, Lesbian Nation: The Feminist Solution (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973), p. 165.
32. For discussions of CR and lesbianism in the early 1970s see Coletta Reid, “Ideology: Guide to Action,” Furies, (March/April 1972), 1(3): 6, and Christine Mimichilld, “Gay and Straight in the Movement,” Women: A Journal of Liberation, (1972), 2(4): 41–42. Personal interview with Lois, age 55, San Antonio, March 29, 1988.
33. Personal interview with Sandy, age 57, Lincoln, Neb., October 12, 1988.
34. Bernice Goodman, “Notes on Creating a Lesbian Community,” paper given at the Berkshire History of Women Conference, Mount Holyoke College, August 23–25, 1978. Personal interview with Barbara Gittings, cited above.
35. Some articles appeared in the Ladder even as early as the 1950s outlining the need for a lesbian movement separate from men, e.g., October 1958, p. 5. The speech of Shirley Weller, national president of DOB, at the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations is an example of an angry prelesbian-feminist split that was emerging between gay men and lesbians: reported in Martin and Lyon, p. 280. Del Martin also called for lesbians to work outside the gay movement in “If That’s All There Is,” Motive: Lesbian/ Feminist Issue, (1972), 1(32): 45–46. “Ladies’ auxiliary” comment in Sharon Zecha on NOW Panel on Life Styles, March 25, 1971, reported in Every-woman (July 9, 1971), 2(10). See also Rose Jordan et al., “Forum: Can Men and Women Work Together?,” in Karla Jay and Allen Young, eds., After You’re Out: Personal Experiences of Gay Men and Lesbian Women, (1975; reprint, New York: Pyramid Books, 1977), p. 174.
36. Ginny Berson, “Reformism: The Politics of Ostriches,” Motive, (1972), 32(1):4–8.
37. Adrienne Rich, “The Meaning of Our Love for Women Is What We Have Constantly to Expand,” speech at the New York Lesbian Pride Rally, June 26, 1977 (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Out and Out Books, 1977).
38. Betty Friedan quoted in Robin Morgan, Going Too Far (New York: Random House, 1976), p. 176.
39. Gloria Steinem, “The Politics of Supporting Lesbianism,” in Ginny Vida, ed., Our Right to Love: A Lesbian Resource Book, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978), pp. 266–69.
40. Anonymous letter, “Right to Closets,” Off Our Backs, (December 1978), 8(11):16.
9. Lesbian Nation
1. Jane Rule, Contract with the World (Tallahassee, Fla: Naiad Press, 1980), p. 154.
2. Barbara Ponse discusses “destigmatization” and “aristocraticization” of lesbianism in Identities in the Lesbian World: The Social Construction of Self (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1978), pp. 99–100.
3. Quoted in Ponse, pp. 84–85.
4. For discussions of terms see Letters to the Editor, Focus: A Journal for Lesbians, February 1978; Sharon Crase, Sisters (June 1973), 4(6): pp. 18–19; and Laurel Galana, “Distinctions: The Circle Game,” in Gina Covina and Laurel Galana, eds., The Lesbian Reader (Guerneville, Calif: Amazon Press, 1975)» p. 159. According to a nineteenth-century lexicon, the word “dike” meant a man in a full dress suit or a full set of men’s clothes: see Maximillian Schele De Vere, Americanisms: The English of the New World (New York: 1871), p. 597. But lesbian scholars have attempted to give the word more heroic meaning. Judy Grahn speculates that the word came from the goddess Dike of Greece, who was Gaia’s granddaughter. Grahn says the name meant “the way, the path,” and the goddess’ social function was keeping the balance of forces, Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds (Boston: Beacon, 1984), p. 47. See also pp. 139–40.
5. List of groups, journals, and bookstores published in Amazon Quarterly (1973), 1(4) 61–67.
6. Nancy Groschwitz, “Practical Economics for a Women’s Community,” in Karla Jay and Allen Young, eds., Lavender Culture (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1978), pp. 477–83.
7. Charlotte Bunch and Rita Mae Brown, “What Every Lesbian Should Know,” Motive (1972), 32(1) 4–8. Lee Schwing and Helaine Harris, “Building Feminist Institutions,” Furies (May/June 1973), 2(3) 2–3: 7.
8. Willie Tyson, “Lima
Bean: Take One,” Off Our Backs (August/ September 1974), 4(9): 4–5.
9. Alix Dobkin, “Talking Lesbian,” Lavender Jane Loves Women (New York: Women’s Music Network, 1974).
10. Meg Christian quoted in “The Muse of Olivia: Our Own Economy, Our Own Song,” Off Our Backs (August/ September 1974), 4(9). Cris Williamson complained that she had received little response from the festival audience in Champagne: “Perhaps they thought I was too ‘slick.’ I got the feeling if I had made more mistakes, put myself down more, been more tentative, maybe I would have gotten more feedback. Maybe women aren’t ready yet to identify with a strong woman image”: Interview, Lesbian Tide July 1974, p. 19. Professionalism discussed in editorial statement, The Rock (Northampton, Mass.: Magaera Press, 1977).
11. Many of the women’s music companies could not survive long financially, but others cropped up to take their places when they went under. Companies such as Icebergg, Rosetta, Labyris, and Windham Hill were started in the 1980s. Ladyslipper, Pleiades, and Holly Near’s Redwood Records have held on since the mid-1970s. For discussions of financial difficulties in women’s music see “Financial Letter from the Women of the ‘We Want the Music’ Collective,” Pearl Diver, Fall 1977, and Lynn D. Shapiro, “The Growing Business Behind Women’s Music,” in Jay and Young, p. 197. Women’s music audience responses described in Astrib Bergle, “Women Concerts Reviewed,” So’s Your Old Lady: A Lesbian Feminist Journal May 1977, pp. 16–17. Personal interview with Deb, age 36, Fresno, April 29, 1987.
12. History of Olivia from Judy Dlugacz, “If It Weren’t for the Music: Fifteen Years of Olivia Records,” Hot Wire (July 1988), 4(3): p. 28–35; Grahn, pp. 190–91; Shapiro, pp. 195–200; Judy Nixon and Ginny Berson, “Women’s Music,” in Our Right to Love: A Lesbian Resource Book (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978), pp. 252–55; “The Muse of Olivia,” pp. 2–3 +. Ginny Berson quoted in “The Muse of Olivia.”
Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers Page 46
