Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers

by Lillian Faderman

  12. J. Lee Lehman, “Lust is Just a Four-Letter Word,” Heresies: The Sex Issue (1981), 12:80–81.

  13. Jo Ann Loulan, “Good News About Lesbian Sex,” Out/Look: National Lesbian and Gay Quarterly, Spring 1988, pp. 90–93. Statistics on lesbians’ similarity to heterosexual women in Blumstein and Schwartz pp. 272–73. Survey among Boulder, Col. lesbians, On Our Backs (Summer 1987), 4(1): 12–13.

  14. Samois, ed., What Color Is Your Handkerchief: A Lesbian S/M Sexuality Reader (Berkeley: Samois, 1979). Personal interview with Kathy Andrew of Stormy Leather, San Francisco, August 10, 1987.

  15. For discussion of a brief 1970s attempt to open a gay bathhouse to lesbians see Arthur Bell, “The Bath Life Gets Respectability,” in Karla Jay and Allen Young, eds., Lavender Culture (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1978). Rita Mae Brown, “Queen for a Day: A Stranger in Paradise,” The Real Paper, October 8, 1975.

  16. Personal interview with JoAnna, age 38, San Francisco, September 12, 1987. Personal interview with Clare, age 35, San Francisco, August 5, 1987.

  17. Personal interview with Rainbeau, age 29, San Francisco, August 7, 1987. Tatoo Blue, interview in On Our Backs (Spring 1986), 2(4): 22–26 +.

  18. Personal interview with Susie Bright, San Francisco, August 11, 1987. For fantasy fiction that reflects the influence of gay male sexual patterns see, for example, Vera Goeglein, “Sunday Strangers,” On Our Backs, Winter 1986, p. 21 +; Leatherwing Bat, “Out for the Evening,” Bad Attitude, Summer 1987, pp. 20–23. A melange of sexual adventurism and traditional female values of concern, gentleness, and romance similar to that prevalent in the porno magazines may be found in recent pornographic novels written by and for lesbians. See, for example, the volumes produced by the Denver-based Lace Publications in the mid-1980s, such as Artemis Oakgrove’s trilogy The Raging Peace (1984), Dreams of Vengeance (1985), and Throne of Council (1986), as well as Lady Winston, ed., The Leading Edge: An Anthology of Lesbian Sexual Fiction (Denver: Lace Publications, 1987).

  19. Mary Riege Laner, “‘Personals’ Advertisements of Lesbian Women,” Journal of Homosexuality (Fall 1978), 4(1):41–61. Sex ads quoted are from On Our Backs (Spring 1986), 2(4).

  20. Kinsey-statistics cited in The Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, September 1970). Julia R. Heiman, “The Physiology of Erotica: Women’s Sexual Arousal,” Psychology Today (November 1975), 8: 90–94.

  21. Personal interview with Kathy, age 36, San Francisco, August 10, 1987.

  22. For descriptions of the procedures of lesbian s/m see Samois, ed., Coming to Power: Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S/M, 2d rev. ed. (Boston: Alyson, 1982) and Pat Califia, Sapphistry: The Book of Lesbian Sexuality, 2d rev. ed. (Tallahassee, Fla.: Naiad Press, 1983). Karen Winter, “Lesbian Limerick,” Commmon Lives/ Lesbian Lives (Summer 1986), 20: 85.

  23. “Samois: Who We Are,” in Coming to Power, p. 288. Gayle Rubin quoted in Carole S. Vance, “Gender Systems, Ideology, and Sex Research,” in Ann Sitow et al. eds., Powers of Desire (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), p. 372. Sarah Zoftig, “Coming Out,” in Coming to Power, pp. 86–94. I am grateful to Gayle Rubin for sharing with me the history of the lesbian s/m movement, in a personal interview, San Francisco, August 14, 1987. For a concise discussion of the lesbian s/m movement in San Francisco, which has been a leader in the lesbian sexual revolution, see Pat Califia, “A Personal View of the History of the Lesbian S/M Community and Movement in San Francisco,” in Samois, Coming to Power, pp. 243–81.

  24. Personal interview with Corona, age 41, San Francisco, August 17, 1987. Gayle Rubin, “The Leather Menace,” Body Politic (April 1982), 82: 33–35

  25. For lesbian therapists as proponents of s/m see, e.g., Carol Stack, “Lesbian Sexual Problems,” Bad Attitudes (Spring 1985), 1(4): 20–21; Nichols; River Malcolm, “Passing Through,” Thursday’s Child (San Diego), September 1979.

  26. Personal interview with Karen, age 37, and LuAnna, age 35, Austin, Tex., April 1, 1988.

  27. Personal interview with Karyn, age 32, Fresno, December 12, 1987. Personal interview with Dr. Sharon Young, San Diego, July 31, 1987.

  28. The poignant essays of Joan Nestle, which created cultural heroes out of 1950s butches and femmes, were central to the reexamination of butch/ femme roles for the 1980s. See, for example, “Butch/Fern Relationships: Sexual Courage in the 1950s,” Heresies: The Sex Issue (1981), 12(3): 21–24. Several of the essays are reprinted in Joan Nestle, A Restricted Country (Ithaca, N.Y.: Firebrand Books, 1987). Donna Allegra, “Butch on the Streets,” in Fight Back: Feminist Resistence to Male Violence (Cleis Press, 1981), pp. 44–45. Paula Mariedaughter, “Too Butch for Straights, Too Femme for Dykes,” Lesbian Ethics, (Spring 1986), 2(1): 96–100. Norma, “Butch/Fern Relationships Revisited,” Hartford Women’s Center Newletter (Dec. 1982), 5(12): 1–2.

  29. Joan Nestle, “The Fern Question,” in Carol Vance, ed., Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), pp. 232–41. Personal interview with Neva, age 46, Lincoln, Neb., October 12, 1988. Random House Dictionary of the English Language (New York: Random House, 1966).

  30. Jean Lynch and Mary Ellen Reilly, “Role Relationships: Lesbian Perspectives,” Journal of Homosexuality (Winter 1985/86), 12(2): 53–69. See also the attempt by Esther Newton and Shirley Walton to refine our understanding of concepts such as butch/femme through a more precise sexual vocabulary that distinguishes between sexual preference, erotic identity, erotic role, and erotic acts: “The Misunderstanding: Towards a More Precise Sexual Vocabulary,” in Vance, pp. 242–50.

  31. Personal interview with Sally, age 29, San Francisco, September 12, 1987.

  32. Ellen Frye, Look Under the Hawthorne (Norwich, Vt.: New Victoria, 1987), p. 108. Lee Lynch, The Swashbuckler (Tallahassee, Fla.: Naiad Press, 1985), p. 66. Bonnie Zimmerman, in The Safe Sea of Women: Lesbian Fiction, 1969–1989 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), pp. 113–14, discusses the metamorphosis if the butch figure.

  33. Amber Hollibaugh and Cherrie Moraga, “What We’re Rollin’ Around in Bed With: Sexual Silences in Feminism,” (1981; reprinted in Ann Snitow et al., eds., Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), pp. 396, 400.

  34. Hollibaughand Moraga, p. 398.

  35. Jess Wells, “The Dress,” Common Lives/ Lesbian Lives, (Summer 1983), 8.

  36. Personal interview with Phyllis Lyon, San Francisco, August 14, 1987. Karen Cameron in “Femme and Butch: A Readers’ Forum,” Lesbian Ethics (Fall 1986), 2(2): 96–99. Norma, “Butch/Fern Relationships Revisited.”

  37. Personal interview with Susie Bright, cited above.

  38. Michael Bronski, Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility (Boston: South End Press, 1984), p. 214.

  11. From Tower of Babel to Community

  1. New York Times, August 18, 1984, p. 2.

  2. Jean Swallow, Leave a Light On for Me (San Francisco: Spinters/Aunt Lute, 1986).

  3. K. D. Lang quoted in Burt Kearns, “Canadian Cowpie,” Spin Magazine, September 1988.

  4. Lori Ryan, “The Razor Edge of Truth—A Conversation with Robin Tyler,” Visibilities, November/ December 1988, pp. 8–11.

  5. Personal interview with Frederika, age 37, Kansas City, Mo., October 14, 1988.

  6. Personal interview with Lois, age 48, Omaha, Neb., October 11, 1988.

  7. Personal interview with Nora, age 36, San Diego, July 30, 1987.

  8. “Politics of accommodation” phrase in paper by Marilee Lindemann, panel: “Changing (Re)Presentations of Lesbian Sexuality in the Lesbian Novel Since 1945,” Berkshire History of Women Conference, Wellesley College, Mass., June 22, 1987. Personal interview with Sandy, age 39, Fresno, May 7, 1987.

  9. Personal interview with Nicole Shapiro, founder of Bay Area Career Women, San Francisco, August 12, 1988.

  10. Personal interview with Phyllis Lyon, San Francisco, August 14, 1987. List of luxuries culled from Georgia Cotrell, Shoulders
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Firebrand Books, 1987); Ann Allen Shockley, Say Jesus and Come to Me (1982; reprint, Tallahassee, Fla: Naiad Press, 1987); Mary Wings, She Came Too Late (Freedom, Calif: Crossing Press, 1987); Artemis Oakgrove, The Raging Peace (Denver: Lace Publications, 1984).

  11. Personal interview with Matile, San Francisco, September 26, 1988.

  12. Personal interview with Kasey, age 42, Austin, Tex., April 1, 1988.

  13. Noretta Koertge, Valley of the Amazons (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), p. 58. See also Bonnie Zimmerman’s discussion of this work in The Safe Sea of Women: Lesbian Fiction, 1969–1989 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), p. 136.

  14. Maureen Brady, Folly (Trumansburg, N.Y.: Crossing Press, 1982); Barbara Wilson, Ambitious Women (Seattle: Seal Press, 1982); Chris South, Clenched Fists, Burning Crosses (Trumansburg, N.Y.: Crossing Press, 1984).

  15. Paula Culbreth, “A Personal Reading of This Bridge Called My Back,” Sinister Wisdom (1982), 21:15–28. Barbara Epstein, “Direct Action: Lesbians Lead the Movement,” Out/Look (Summer 1988), 1(2):27–32.

  16. Ellen Herman, “Getting to Serenity: Do Addiction Programs Sap Our Political Vitality?” Out/Look (Summer 1988), 1(2): 10–21. Personal interview with Nancy, age 38, San Diego, July 30, 1987. Peg Byron, “Say It Ain’t So: Is the Lesbian Sex Revolt Dead?,” On Our Backs, Winter 1986, pp. 10–11. Eleanor Lord, “The Heart Connection,” unpublished study of 100 lesbians, Berkshire County, 1986. Panel on lesbian lifestyles, Sociology of Women in Contemporary Society class, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, October 12, 1988.

  17. Jean Swallow, Out from Under: Sober Dykes and Our Friends (San Francisco: Spinsters Ink, 1983), introduction. A national lesbian health care survey, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, recorded far different statistics: while 25 percent of the respondents reported drinking several times a week, only 6 percent said they drank daily. JAMA, January 1, 1988, p. 19. Personal interview with Diane, age 41, Boston, June 18, 1987.

  18. Personal interview with Stacy Raye, age 23, Berkeley, July 27, 1988. Boston meetings reported in Herman. San Francisco meetings reported in “Living Sober, 1988),” Coming Up! (August 1988), 9(11)111. In San Francisco the 1987 gay and lesbian Living Sober regional conference drew 4,000; the 1988 conference drew 5,000. Pride Institute discussed in Journal of the American Medical Association (January 1, 1988), 259(1):19.

  19. Personal interview with Janet, age 36, San Francisco, August 3, 1987.

  20. Personal interview with Maureen, age 36, Fresno, February 27, 1988.

  21. Personal interview with Jody, age 47, San Antonio, March 27, 1988. Barbara Sang, “Some Existential Issues of Middle Aged Lesbians,” unpublished paper, 1987.

  22. Joy Schulenberg, “Parade Update,” Coming Up! (August 1987), 8(ii):16.

  23. Regarding suspicions by lesbians of color of tokenism among “progressive” white lesbians see, e.g., Cathy Cockrell, “NOW Lesbian Conference Sparks Internal Dissent,” San Francisco Sentinel, October 21, 1988, p. 3. Information also from personal interview (by telephone) with Camille Barber, age 34, and Loni, age 25, discussion leaders of Lesbians of Color rap group, Berkeley, August 11, 1988. In San Francisco during the late 1980s, a Native American woman, Barbara Cameron, was the co-chair for the Lesbian Agenda for Action and the vice president of the Alice B. Toklas Lesbian-Gay Democratic Club; Carmen Vasquez, a Chicana, was the coordinator of the Lesbian and Gay Health Organization and the president of the San Francisco Women’s Building Board; Pat Norman, a black, was the co-chair of the Gay and Lesbian National March on Washington; Melinda Paras, a Filipina, was a coordinator of the lesbian and gay Community United Against Violence.

  24. Personal interview with Abby Abinanti, age 40, San Francisco, August 12, 1987. Cf. Anu, a South Asian woman, who writes of going back to Calcutta for a visit and feeling both happy to be with Indians again and alienated because she could not talk about her lesbianism, yet she observes that the lesbian community in the States does the reverse: “denies the ‘Indianess’ that is so essential to who I am, but affirms the equally essential ‘lesbian’ in me,” “Notes from an Indian Diary,” Anamika (March 1986), 1(2)17–8. Personal interview with Mariana Romo-Carmona, age 35, New York, October 9, 1987. Gwendolyn Weindling, a black lesbian, also talks of the frustration of realizing that one’s feelings and perceptions cannot be validated by the white community. She complains that whenever she got emotional, white women found it intimidating and accused her of being angry: “I’ve come to understand emotionalism as being taboo in white ‘cultures’,” “Righteous Anger in Three Parts: Racism in the Lesbian Community—One Black Lesbian Perspective,” in Joan Gibbs and Sarah Bennett, eds., Top Ranking: A Collection of Articles on Racism and Classism in the Lesbian Community (Brooklyn: February 3rd Press, 1980), pp. 76–77.

  25. June Chan, “Asian Lesbians of the East Coast,” panel presentation, Berkshire Women’s History Conference, Wellesley College, June 21, 1987.

  26. Phoenix Rising (December/January 1987/88), 20:1. See also the Asian Lesbians of the East Coast Newsletter, which reiterates the group’s conviction that Asian lesbians must achieve visibility (no. 3, Summer 1986).

  27. Personal interview with Tobie, age 36, Kansas City, Mo., October 15, 1988. Private Eyes incident reported in Womanews, December/January 1986, pp. 9, 14; February 1987, p. 1; March 1987, p.6; June 1987, p. 8; May 1987, p. 6.

  28. Valley Fat Dykes, “Miss Fat Manners’ Rules of Etiquette,” Common Lives/ Lesbian Lives (1986), 20:83. Firing and appeal to lesbian community reported in Lesbian News (Santa Cruz), February 1988.

  29. Buffy Dunker with Jennifer Abod, “From the First Old Lesbians Conference,” Sojourner, July 1987. Shevy Healey, Welcome address; Jeanne Adleman, “We’re Here, We Won’t Go Away,” speech; Barbara McDonald, “A Movement of Old Lesbians,” speech: West Coast Conference and Celebration by and for Old Lesbians, April 24, 1987. Personal interview with Sally Binford, age 63, San Francisco, August 6, 1987.

  30. Barbara McDonald with Cynthia Rich, Look Me in the Eye: Old Women, Aging, and Ageism (San Francisco: Spinsters Ink, 1983); Baba Copper, Over the Hill: Reflections on Ageism Between Women (Freedom, Calif.: Crossing Press, 1988); also, Baba Copper, Ageism in the Lesbian Community (Freedom, Calif: Crossing Press, 1987).

  31. Susan R. Johnson et al., “Factors Influencing Lesbian Gynecological Care: A Preliminary Study,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (May 1981), 140(1):23. Examples of books on lesbian pregnancy and parenting: Cheri Pies, Considering Parenthood: A Workbook for Lesbians (San Francisco: Spinsters/ Aunt Lute, 1985); Susan Robinson and H. F. Pizer, How to Have a Baby Without a Man (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985). Examples of films: We Are Family (directed by Aimee Sands); Choosing Children (directed by Debra Chasnoff and Kim Kavsner).

  32. Custody cases discussed in Karla Dobinski, “Lesbians and the Law,” in Karla Jay and Allen Young, eds., After You’re Out: Personal Experiences of Gay Men and Lesbians (New York: Pyramid Books, 1977), pp. 156–57; film, Sandy and Madeline’s Family (1971); Judy Gerber and Leslie Mullin, “Lesbian Mothers: Rozzie and Harriet Raise a Family,” Breakthrough (Summer 1988), 12(1):27–32. Further information about lesbian mother battles for custody from personal interviews with Mariana Romo-Carmona, cited above; Tobie, age 36, Kansas City, Mo., October 15, 1988; Monarch, age 54, Kansas City, Mo., October 15, 1988. Lindsy Van Gelder, “Gay Gothic,” Ms., July /August 1987, pp. 5–12. Courts have approved joint adoptions by lesbian couples in San Francisco and Alameda Counties. Baby boom: In 1986, in San Francisco alone at least 500 babies were known to have been born to lesbian mothers through donor insemination.

  33. Lesbian mothers’ groups listed in Coming Up! (August 1987) 8(11). Play group reported in Becky Dixon, “Lesbian Parenting,” Bay Area Career Women Newsletter (August/ September 1988), 8(4): 1 +. Exhortation in Cheryl Jones, “Motherliness,” Coming Up! (August 1987), 8(11): 14.

  34. Julie V. Iovine, “‘Lipsticks’ and Lords: Yale’s New Look,” Wall Street Journal
, August 4, 1987, p. 24.

  35. For lesbian separatist communes still in existence in the 1980s see Joyce Cheney, ed., Lesbian Land (Minneapolis: Word Weavers, 1985) and Maize: A Lesbian Country Magazine. Many of the women who write for the more radical lesbian periodicals such as Common Lives/Lesbian Lives still call themselves separatists. Personal interview with lesbian separatists Madeline, age 37, and Naomi, age 33, Berkeley, July 30, 1988. See also contemporary defenses of separatism, especially Sarah Hoagland, “Lesbian Separatism: An Empowering Reality,” Sinister Wisdom (Spring 1988), 34:23–33. Hoagland continued to maintain that separatism is an excellent strategy for challenging the system of patriarchy by “rendering it nonsense,” refusing to act according to the system’s rules and framework. Lesbian attachments discussed in Rima Shore, “Sisterhood—and My Brothers,” Conditions: Eight (Spring 1982), 3(2).

  36. Advertisement, Coming Up! (August 1987), 8(n):8.

  37. Quoted in Dennis Altman, AIDS in the Mind of America: The Social, Political, and Psychological Impact of a New Epidemic (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987), p. 94.

  38. Ryan, p. 11.

  39. Cindy Patton, Sex and Germs: The Politics of AIDS (Boston: South End Press, 1985), pp. 3–4. Patton quotes at length antigay literature from right wing hate groups that claim AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality: passim. Those few recorded instances of lesbian transmission of AIDS usually involve intravenous drug use coupled with sexual activity during menstruation or traumatic enough to cause bleeding: see, e.g., Michael Marmor et al., Annals of Internal Medicine (December 1986), I05(6):969.

  40. Videotape of the march, Part of the USA, October 11, 1987, Girard Video Productions. See also Paul Horowitz, “Beyond the Gay Nation: Where Are We Marching?,” Out/Look, Spring 1988, pp. 7–21. Washington, D.C., police ultimately estimated the size of the march at 650,000: Lesbian Connections (July/August 1988), 11(1):4. Expectations and demands of the marchers discussed in Lori Ryan, “For Love and for Life, We’re Not Going Back,” Visibilities (Fall 1987), 1(2): 17.