Epic Gallery: 150 Years Of Lesbians And Other Lady-Loving-Ladies

I really threw myself into Herstory Month, in June, eating every accessible herstory archive on the internet and spending hours in the library, accumulating massive stacks of borrowed books which I stored at the foot of my bed. My girlfriend was not a big fan of the stacks of books at the foot of the bed.

I was looking for words but eventually, also, for pictures. Honestly before tumblr it was difficult to find very much lesbian imagery at all online — it was always the same ten or twelve stock photos — let alone pictures of lesbians taken prior to 2000. I wanted to see an evolution of our community, how we’d grown and changed over the years — and not just in a montage of famous out actresses and models, but pictures of actual people, pictures of women who were active in the community — regular human beings, writers and social activists.

So I started collecting them. I scoured tumblr, discovered regional library archives online and visited websites like fuck yeah queer vintage, the new york public library digital archives, out history, and know homo. Unsatisfied with the racial diversity present in the imagery I found online, I began scanning books, screenshotting google books and even screenshotting documentaries. It took months, but every time I look at this post and the faces after faces of queer women throughout history… I get really excited!

Four quick disclaimers: 1) Obviously it’s impossible to verify the sexual orientation of some of the subjects of earlier photos I found on tumblr, the pre-1920s photos especially. But because I found them on vintage queer tumblrs, etc., I went ahead and used them, but some of these photos may just be of cross-dressers or super-close friends. 2) Obviously it’s also difficult to find photos of women of color prior to the 1950’s, because America sucks. 3) I focused on America because doing the entire world is really hard/impossible. It’s possible pics from Canada or The UK [ETA: or France, apparently!] found their way in here, though. 4)I’ve tried to credit where I found these photos and who took them. Unfortunately, because I’m an idiot, I erased the text-edit document where I was keeping track of photo credits. If you see anything here that is improperly credited or if you can identify the origin of any photos that weren’t credited at all, please email me and let me know! (riese [at] autostraddle dot com).

I’d also like to thank the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco for their permission using photos from their collection here.

150 Years of Lady-Loving-Ladies In The U.S.

1850s

1880s

1890s

1900s

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1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

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1990s

Our Legacy: Six Lesbian Magazines From The Then Before Now

In the mid-twentieth century, as gay men in urban areas began forming communities and meeting each other via the sexual subcultures prospering in bars, bathhouses and outdoor cruising spots, lesbians started communing around a more cerebral common ground: READING! Over time, women’s bookstores were joining bars as THE central place to meet other lesbians and meanwhile, feminist and lesbian-owned printing collectives were popping up all over the country. And, obviously, groups of ambitious dykes all over the land gathered with one another to create magazines they hoped could change the world. I can relate to this desire!

Many of these magazines have faded into obscurity or barely breathed at all, unfortunately. This is particularly tragic because some of these situations had amazing names. There was Boston’s radical No More Fun and Games (1968-1973), Chicago’s Killer Dyke – Lesbian Separatist Magazine By The Flippies (Feminist Lesbian Intergalactic Party) (1971-1972), Iowa City’s Better Homes and Dykes (1972-1982), Maine Freewoman’s Herald: a mostly lesbian journal (1972), Brooklyn’s Echo of Sappho (1972-1973), Berkeley’s Dykes and Gorgons (1973-1976), Columbus, Ohio’s Purple Cow, Minneapolis’ So’s Your Old Lady (1973-1979) and The Salsa Soul Sisters/Third World Women’s Gay-zette (1976-1985), among so many others.

Most of these defunct lesbian journals didn’t accept advertising from corporations, charged as little as possible for their publications and encouraged women to share their copy with others who couldn’t afford it. Continued publishing was enabled by passion and gumption and a desire to create social change. Subscription costs rarely covered even basic expenses, so funding often came from the writers themselves and many publications survived with the help of financial gifts from supportive lesbian fairy godmothers. Clearly we continue on in this spirit today.

You can find many of these publications at various University libraries all over the country, but there are a few you can actually find out more about right here on the internet, and those are the ones I’ve chosen to focus on today.

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6 Old School Lesbian Magazines You Should Know About+

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1. Vice Versa (June 1947- February 1948)

[read online at queer music heritage]

It all started with Vice Versa, subtitled “America’s Gayest magazine.” Launched in 1947 in Los Angeles, the magazine was headed up by a secretary who went by the name “Lisa Ben” and produced the magazine at the office she worked in. Ben hand-typed the magazine using a manual typewriter and created multiple copies by writing on carbon paper. Ben didn’t want to sell Vice Versa, she just handed it out to her friends with instructions: “When you’re through with it, please pass it on to another lesbian.”

The magazine talked mostly about books and movies and music, in some cases even essentially “recapping” a book that readers might not be able to find in their own libraries due to censorship of queer materials. Ben had trouble finding contributors for the new magazine and usually ended up publishing everything that came in to her office so that she wouldn’t hurt anybody’s feelings. Ben shuttered the publication after nine issues because the office she worked at closed, and her new job didn’t give her a chance to secretly make a lesbian magazine. It was difficult to meet other lesbians in those closeted times, but Vice Versa enabled Ben to do so, and, well, vice versa.

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2. The Ladder (1956 – 1972)

[read about it online here]

“A typical issue would have one or two short stories (usually of the romance genre), an essay about “sexuality” by an expert (psychologist, minister, anthropologist), an historical biography about a famous or infamous woman who was probably a lesbian (or one who passed as a man), several book reviews by “Gene Damon” (Barbara Grier) or other contributors, news of homophile political and legal activities, poems, and letters from readers. “Cross Currents” was added in 1963; it began as “Here and There” and contained any information about lesbians, gay men, feminist actions, rumors of possible lesbians anywhere.”

(via Every Magazine Is New Until You’ve Read It)

The Daughters of Bilitis, founded by Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, debuted The Ladder in October of 1956. The first issue included reassurances from an attorney that lesbians had nothing to fear in joining DOB or subscribing to the magazine — at that time it was still very dangerous to be “out.” The DOB aimed to change the image of lesbians in society and the designation of homosexuality as a mental illness by presenting to the public a very sanitized group of “respectable” women: “advocating [to lesbians] a mode of behavior and dress acceptable to society.” They shunned butch/femme roles and had seemingly no awareness whatsoever of working-class lesbians.

The Ladder began as a 12-page newsletter of book reviews, news, poetry, short stories and DOB meetings news distributed to 175 friends and medical professionals who DOB thought would be interested in issues surrounding female homosexuality. The magazine was typed on a typewriter and copied via mimeograph. Legendarily, Lorraine Hansberry wrote the magazine in 1957 to inquire about buying back-issues and to say she was “glad as heck that you exist,” a 20-page letter that was published in its entirety in the magazine.

The Ladder, despite all its presently problematic aspects, made a huge impact on the community, many of whom knew little of others out there “like them” until they saw the magazine.

Historian Marcia Gallo: “For women who came across a copy in the early days, The Ladder was a lifeline. It was a means of expressing and sharing otherwise private thoughts and feelings, of connecting across miles and disparate daily lives, of breaking through isolation and fear.”

As DOB chapters sprung up in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, The Ladder continued publishing, enabled by a $100,000 anonymous donation. Barbara Gittings became editor in 1963 and began publishing photos of actual women on the covers and gave the magazine a more political and lesbian-centric tone. Barbara Grier took over as editor in 1968, and in 1970 severed the magazine from DOB to publish it independently. There was a lot of drama surrounding this situation, which was all part of larger drama surrounding the movement and the DOB in general.

The Ladder published its last issue in August/September 1972. Grier would later note that “no woman ever made a dime for her work, and some … worked themselves into a state of mental and physical decline on behalf of the magazine.”

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3. The Furies (1972-1973)

[read online at rainbow history]

The Furies began as a collective, initiated by twelve women in D.C. — including Charlotte Bunch, Rita Mae Brown and Joan Biren — during the spring of 1971. They began distributing The Furies: Lesbian/Feminist Monthly in 1972, throwing their hats in the ring for the cause of “challenging existing patterns of living and behavior” and “providing an articulate ideology and challenging analysis of sexism, patriarchy, and the challenges facing lesbian feminists across the country.”

Bunch, when outlining the plan to initiate a women-lead revolution via newsletter, reminded her sisters to “have fun so we do not go mad in male supremacist, heterosexual Amerika.” In addition to herstory, political writing, social critique and anti-capitalist manifestos, The Furies published poetry by women like Pat Parker and Judy Grahn, photography by the aforementioned JEB and once even ran a piece by Gertrude Stein!

Historian Julie R. Enzer writes: “The women in the organization wanted to understand sexism and its internecine relationship with classism, racism, capitalism, and imperialism. They wanted to intervene in society to build a world that was different, a world that was based on a new set of values. The history of The Furies and the ways of thinking that they were committed to developing are useful models for people engaged in contemporary political—and poetical—struggles.”

You can find Charlotte Bunch’s article “lesbians in revolt,” from the first issue, all over the internet, a piece which laid a great deal of groundwork for the lesbian feminist movement.

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4. DYKE MAGAZINE (1976)

[read online at seesaw]

“We want to publish a magazine that fulfills our need for analysis, communication and news of Lesbian culture. We believe that “Lesbian culture” presumes a separatist analysis. If Lesbian culture is intermixed with straight culture, it is no longer Lesbian; it is heterosexual or heterosocial because energy and time are going to men. Lesbian community – Lesbian culture- means Lesbian only DYKE is a magazine for Dykes only! We will speak freely among ourselves. We are not interested in telling the straight world what we are doing. In fact, he hope they never even see the magazine. It is none of their business. If they chance to see it, we hope they will think it is mindless gobbledegook. We are already thinking in ways that are incomprehensible to them.”

In 1975, Liza Cowan and Penny House — best friends since the age of four — launched DYKE magazine. They were in their mid-twenties, living in New York, and wanted to be part of the burgeoning cultural conversation around lesbianism, and lesbian separatism in particular. Most lesbian separatists believed that the best way to live was completely without men altogether, and that women should band together and form their own self-nurturing communities free of ties to the patriarchal world. If you hate men, like me and Julie Goldman, then you probably think this is a pretty bang-up idea. Of course, it was more functional in theory than in practice and certain elements of the philosophy would be considered highly problematic — and often transphobic, racist or elitist — today.

The magazine made it through six issues before having to close, and now Liza and Penny have posted a great deal of DYKE’s archives online. Material included articles on “theoretical politics, live events, place, current and past history, media, fashions, music, home economics, literature, animal lore, health, applied sciences and gossip.”  Basically, it’s like an amazing lesbian tumblr + livejournal, but in print and for the 70’s — which is why it’s so fascinating. The writing in DYKE is relatively personal and the writers are relatively inexperienced (their only “big name” is Alix Dobkin). You won’t find polemics from Audre Lourde or Adrienne Rich in DYKE, but you’ll find the closest thing you can to reading the diary of, basically, middle-class white lesbian separatists in the mid-70’s — complete with the angry lesbian commenters!

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5. Azalea: A Magazine by Third World Lesbians (1977-1983)

“Now, in 1989, some of us (and the numbers continue to grow) are speaking of being lesbians — autonomously, collectively, emotionally, historically. Not only are Black lesbians writing, but we are writing – sharing – with other 3rd world lesbians as well… Native American, Asian, Latina and Black dykes are nourishing ourselves with ideas and feelings. Although there are many factors that keep us from each other – divert our energies – we are still able to do our own work. An enormous need exists for 3rd world lesbians to communicate among ourselves.”

Azalea was the hardest magazine to track down — I eventually managed to snag a copy of their Spring 1980 issue via eBay. I wanted to highlight at least one publication created by and for women of color (other titles include The Ethnic Woman, Black Woman’s Log, Triple Jeopardy, Achè, Sage, Malintzin Onyx Newsletter), but unfortunately was unable to find any you could read online.

Azalea was a product of The Salsa Soul Sisters/Third Word Wimmin Inc Collective, the oldest black lesbian organization in the country. It grew out of the Black Lesbian Caucus of the Gay Activist Alliance, officially splitting from the fathership in 1974 and inviting Latina women to join. “There was no other place for women of color to go and sit down and talk about what it means to be a black lesbian in America,” said original collective member Candice Boyce. SSS aimed to provide a political and social alternative to the discrimination and exploitation of people of color they experienced in lesbian bars.

Azalea’s editorial policy was unique — “we print what you send – work that is important to us as 3rd world lesbians. In order to keep the magazine non-elitist and non hierarchical, WE DO NOT EDIT YOUR WORK. Payment for sending your work is made in a copy of the issue containing your published work.”

The issue I have includes heaps of poetry, a short story called “The Mirror” about a woman whose co-worker is diagnosed with cancer, an article on the First Eastern Regional Conference of the National Black Feminist Organization and simple testimonies from women sharing the facts of their lives, like Lou Dublin, who in “I’m a Sister,” writes “Since age 20, i have lived my life exclusively with wimmin. As I consider my life being a mother, I realize that I too will need support from my sisters. So in return, I will give them my support, love and respect to all of my third world sisters.”

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6. HOT WIRE

[entire HOT WIRE archives are online]

“HOT WIRE specializes in women-identified music and culture, primarily the performing arts, writing/publishing, and film/video. We strongly beleive in the power of the arts to affect social change, and we enjoy documenting the combination of “creativity” and “politics/philosophy.” We are by, for and about women: committed to covering female artists and women’s groups who prioritize feminist and/or lesbian content and ideals in their creative products/events.”

Described as “the essential publication to read during the 1980’s and 90’s” which “reported on and documented a movement and an era,” Chicago-based HOT WIRE launched in 1984 — their debut issue featured comedian Kate Clinton — and raged on for ten years under publisher/editor Toni Armstrong Jr., with subsequent cover stars like Alix Dobkin, Alice Walker, Alison Bechdel, Audre Lorde, Cris Williamson and Holly Near. Advisory Board Members and contributing writers, artists and photographers included Alison Bechdel, Joan E. Biren, Jewelle Gomez, Del Martin, Holly Near, Rhiannon, Amoja Three Rivers, Susan Sarandon, Barbara Grier and Phyllis Lyon.

Their front-of-book section HOTLINE was especially popular with its aim to “get women in touch with each other in spite of the dominant culture’s attempts to keep us isolated.” The multi-page section covered pretty much everything of interest to the readership — from announcing recipients of lesbian writers’ grants and prizes to providing info on how to help a lesbian couple whose house recently burned down to the scoop on political and social actions, bookstore openings, publications, films, and local meet-up groups for various special interests. The January 1992 issue  includes news on the  Madonna fanclub, the Montreal World Film Festival, The Lesbian Herstory Archives fundraising, a trivia contest, Thelma & Louise, same-sex partner immigration in New Zealand, Lily Tomlin, The Women’s Motorcycle Festival and an auction of Frida Kahlo’s “Self-Portrait with Loose Hair,” among many other things.

When Toni Armstrong launched the magazine, she committed to producing it for no less than ten years, and when those ten years were up she made the tough decision to close the publication — citing a need for time, money and sleep and also her “acceptance of the fact that we’re nearing the end of an era.”

Despite the fact that these projects are rarely profitable and usually fold within the first five years, lesbians seem uniquely enthusiastic about using the magazine format to build community, against all odds. For decades we’ve been pouring heaps of time, energy, emotional space and money into assembling and distributing our own words and stories on our own terms. It’s a tradition we hope to be a part of and we owe so much to the women who made these magazines and are blessed to have so many archived publications online.

Books referenced to write this post include: Happy Endings: Lesbian Writers Talk About Their Lives And Work, by Kate Brandt, and Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (Between Men–Between Women), by Lillian Faderman.

Jewelle Gomez, Lesbian Trailblazer: The Autostraddle Interview

You can’t love lesbian herstory without loving Jewelle Gomez.

Gomez is a living, breathing timeline. She has been at the forefront of LGBTQ activism since the early 1980s and has held positions at damned near every human rights organization of merit, including the inaugural board of the GLAAD, the Astraea Lesbian Foundation, Cornell’s Human Sexuality Archives and the Open Meadows foundation. She has witnessed it all, from the Stonewall riots to the ever-present fight for marriage equality. She’s recently been in California courtrooms with her partner, Dr. Diane Sabin, suing for that very right.

Gomez as done all of this while penning seven novels, hundreds of poems and works of short fiction, most notably The Gilda Stories and Forty-Three Septembers. Her work has recently appeared alongside that of Thea Hillman and Ivan E. Coyote in the anthology Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme.

I did not sit down and interview Gomez (we were both standing in an outdoor elevator entrance in Los Angeles at dusk), though I felt as though I should have been bowing to historical lesbian royalty.

I had the opportunity to talk to her about Gore Vidal’s death the day prior, Baldwin, and her thoughts on snot-nosed Millennials like ourselves.

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I wanted to talk to you about Gore Vidal first. I’m thinking a lot about what his work did in terms of instability in the community and retaliation. And even before Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt he was completely out there doing that. And I’m curious to know how you felt about him, were you inspired by that at that time?

Gore Vidal was such a character that you could not help but be amazed by him. In my younger years, hearing him speak – because it was always on the talk shows – I wasn’t really aware of who he was historically at that time. In the 60’s and 70’s he would always be on The Cavett Show and things like that. I just knew he was this eloquent literary person. It wasn’t until later, probably in the 70’s or 80’s when I started doing much more reading, that I read back and read about his work and read about being basically blackballed for writing his gay novel. And I was recently doing my own play about James Baldwin and his anxiety about writing a gay novel, and what happened with Gore Vidal 15 or 20 years earlier was one of the things I went back to think about. Gore Vidal’s experience reconfirmed for me that anxiety about putting something out in the world that was gay-focused in 1957 was not an easy task. James Baldwin knew, I’m sure, very explicitly what had happened to Gore Vidal, that Gore Vidal had to make another career for himself under other names.

Mystery novels.

Right, mystery novels and script doctoring and things like that. It really was an important confirmation for me of how much he brought to the world as an artist refusing to skulk away, and how much he must have been a beacon for some other writers who were trying to figure out what to do. It really justifies, to me, my idea about writing about James Baldwin as he figures out what to do about Giovanni’s Room.

He did that long before lesbian pulp fiction was marketable, even before Patricia Highsmith. She was so haunted by anxiety throughout her career, even though she published under a pseudonym. Going back through his history, I was not that familiar with him initially, and then it was like, wow, there is a lot of stuff there. He really was at the forefront. I’m curious: Where do you think that plays in today? Because one still reads the headlines about queer people not receiving literary accolades for otherwise phenomenal books, publishers being unwilling to publish LGBTQ works…

I believe that the mainstream publishing industry really feels like it’s doing the best it can and that it’s really representing what’s out in the world. But I think that lesbians, and lesbians of color specifically, are completely underrepresented when you look what’s out in print. It’s unfortunate that most of the feminist presses have suffered great losses, and most of them have had to close down. There was a great heyday in the 80’s in which I felt like you could publish anything, you could say anything – any of the initials, L, G, B, or T. That really passed pretty quickly. And while gay men’s work has always been published, it’s usually been that they weren’t writing about gay things. So once the gay writers became more noticed and noticeable and made a showing out as gay writers, then the publishing indutry became, I think, a bit cautious. They are all about the money and the feeling in the industry is that if you can’t write something that’s going to sell 50,000 minimum copies, they really don’t want to spend the money. Most editors don’t believe that anybody reads lesbians except lesbians, although they believe that lots of people want to read gay men, particularly gay white men. They certainly don’t believe that people want to read people of color. So there are all these personal biases, and their inability to be imaginitive with marketing, with developing audiences, keeps the market pretty small.

I mean, when I was looking for a publisher originally for my novel The Gilda Stories in the early 90’s, I had a very reputable literary agent who sent my novel around to all the big houses, and it was rejected by everyone. And my agent said, “Do you really want to see anything?” and I said, “You can tell me the highlights of what they had to say.” One of the letters was “well, we published our black woman this year” and another one was “well your main character is black, she’s a lesbian, she’s a vampire, that’s too complicated.” And all I can say is, 20 years later she’s still in print because a feminist press took a chance on publishing it. I feel like the very limited intellectual and imaginative capabilities of the mainstream often leave writers like me out in the cold.

I’ve been feeling that way about myself too, especially being Latina, definitely. You’re sometimes so unconscious of those boundaries until you run into them, face-first.

Right, right.

I did want to ask you about online publishing, self-publishing and things of that nature. Do you think the increasing amount of online feminist presses are an aggravated answer to stubborn publishing houses? 

You know, I self-published my first two books of poetry. I’m very proud of that. They recouped their cost plus and made a career for me. But there was a time when there were independent bookstores, so I could sell the books in the independent bookstores and do readings, so that was easy. I still believe it’s important to have a physical something, because when people go to a reading it’s much more satisfying to give them something, sell them something, give them Broadsides which I love. And I think publishing online and blogging and online magazines is one of the great things of the 21st century because writers can find community with their readership without waiting for a mainstream publisher. They can develop their style, their ideas, their creativity online as they learn to write. The biggest issue is that the missing element online is the same missing element in most mainstream publishers – there are very few editors. That’s a problem because if you don’t get to work with an editor, you often don’t know – particularly if you’re doing fiction and essays – you don’t get to advance your writing type and learn how to do things better. So that to me would be a very big deal, if online publications could manage to figure out ways to edit work so that writers benefit. One of the ways I learned how to write criticism was by people editing me in the Village Voice. I got my Master’s degree in Journalism, I majored in Critical Writing, and the criticism that I submitted in graduate school got really good attention. But the criticism I got when I was writing film and book reviews for the Village Voice? Couldn’t beat it. I learned everything about critical writing for publication.

They’re different spheres, completely different.

Yeah. I think learning to work with an editor is one of the best things a writer can do.

I’m not-so-secretly holding out with my fingers crossed hoping our own community’s support systems can link through that. I think it’s about giving back. I feel that with the folks I’m working for at Autostraddle. We actually did a spotlight on your poetry, by the way! We love your poetry. 

You’ve got to send me a link so I can look it through!

Will do! What are you working on at the moment?

Right now my play about James Baldwin – it’s called Waiting for Giovanni – premiered in San Francisco a year ago, 2011. I’m doing rewrites now and I’m ging to be doing a reading of the new work. I’ve done one reading in New York, I’m going to do another in the fall. I’m trying to get it to a shape so some other producer will pick it up and will want to put it up there on the stage. That’s my focus. I was very lucky – New Conservatory Theater Center, it’s in San Francisco, it’s a gay theater, it’s been around for about 30 years – they took a chance. The executive director kind of knew me and he heard me read from it actually, and I was reading James Baldwin. And he thought, “Oh, this is going to be good” so he produced it. I had a really great experience. And I only had one other play produced, that was 20 years before. I felt really fortunate and it made me realize I wanted to write more theater. I try to work on a cycle of plays about people of color in the early part of the 20th century who were in the arts. Music, literature, whatever. So we’ll see how far into the future that takes me.

I’m already visualizing certain artists who I would love to see in that.

Well, I’m already working on Alberta Hunter, who was a lesbian singer. So we’re excited about that. I’m also doing another Gilda novel. GildSera: The Alternate Decades.

I think some of our readers are going to be excited, because when we were talking about your poetry they were all, “What about her novels? What about her novels?”

So yeah, Gilda, I’m working on her. I’ve started. I’d say I’ve probably got about half the book done. I don’t know how long that’ll take me, but hopefully soon.

What role did Baldwin play in your cultivation as a writer?

Baldwin was the first writer that I read who was gay. I was probably 14 at the time, and that he was black and gay was such a revelatory thing for me because I knew I was a lesbian. I felt like I learned to love words reading Baldwin. His love for words and mastery of the English language so fascinated me when I read his books. When I was 14 I probably didn’t understand most of it. You go back and you just realize his words have stuck with me all this time. When I went to work on the play I had to reread a lot of things and read some biographical material, and I feel like his voice is so in my head. When writing the play people would ask me, “Well, what kind of permissions did you have to get to put his words into the play?” I said, “Oh, no, I don’t use any of his words, it’s all me.” And that’s the greatest compliment I could have.

Yes, it means the work…works.

He changed my life when I was a kid and now, so I feel really lucky.

What advice do you have for aspiring authors of the Millennial generation? Or even activists from the same generation who might be of color and trying to elbow their way through?

I think as long as writers and activists know that it is all intertwined: art cannot be separated from real life. Activism needs art as much as it needs anything else. And if you can understand where you are within the context of social change, your writing will be strong. Whether you are writing directly about social change or not, you will present a face of change that will be valuable, and inspiring. And mostly just to keep writing. You know, make appointments with yourself to write, like you would make a business appointment with a business associate.

Or even a romantic date.

Exactly, make a date and keep the date. Duke Ellington said he didn’t need inspiration, he needed a deadline. So, if we don’t give ourselves that, if we wait for some inspiration, if we wait for some magazine, we just won’t get the work done. And you want to be ready, when they call you, you want to have a stack of work that is three feet tall that you’ve been working on.

And believe that they will call.

And believe that they will call. If they don’t call, you’ll figure out how to get it out there on your own, because it’s meant to be out there in the world. It’s like me deciding to publish my own stuff. I was kind of writing, writing, writing, and thinking ‘oh, somebody is going to call me.’ I don’t know how I thought that was going to happen. And I so happened to live in the same building as a poet, and I didn’t know who she was, and one day we saw each other in the elevator and she said, “What’re you doing?” and I said, “I’m a poet,” and she said, “Have I read any of your stuff?” and I said, “No, I’m waiting for a publisher,” and she said “Oh, don’t wait for a publisher, do it yourself! It’s pretty cheap, do it yourself!”

Well, it turned out she was Grace Paley, and I asked my roommate, “Who’s that old lady that lives right there?” and she said “Oh, that’s Grace Paley,” and I said, “You are kidding me!” And that is how I published my first book. If the great Grace Paley tells you to do it, you do it! I have never waited for a phone since that moment when she said “Do it,” and I knew “Okay, I’ll do it.” I did my second book that way, too. So, we will find ways to get the work out, as long as you believe in the work.

What were you doing at 23?

At 23 I’d just gotten out of grad school; Columbia. I was teaching theater, and documentary filmmaking to high school students at an after-school program in Westchester, NY called The Loft. I was learning about feminism from the other women who taught there, and trying to figure out when I was actually going to start writing. I mean, I had this degree in Journalism, but I really didn’t want to work in journalism, so I hadn’t quite figured it out. It took me another 10 years before I just started writing, writing, writing. I did a bunch of different things, mostly in New York. I was a stage manager, I worked at a music company, I mean did a bunch of different things, I went to Hunter College – that’s how I met Audre Lorde. So, I just did a lot of things that now I think of as valuable information for my writing.

So that’s where you met Audre Lorde.

Yeah, I’m working on an essay about her now. She was a wonderful mentor for me. Audre is the one who told me that The Gilda Stories was a novel, not a collection of short stories.

That’s amazing; she was amazing.

Yeah, I asked her to read it. She said, “I don’t like short stories, and I really don’t like vampires, but okay.” Then she came back and said “Oh! This is a novel!” So I spent the next year turning it into a novel, and she was always a wonderful mentor because she was demanding and insistent, and a good example of someone who did not, who would not quit. Even when she was told she was dying, she would not quit. I mean, I visited her once in the hospital, it was probably the last several months of her life, I think the last year, because we were doing a poetry contest together. She was in her bed, she said “Oh, yeah, come on, come on down!” and I said “Okay, but I don’t want to tire you” and she said “No.” We had a conversation like she was healthy as you or me. Her energy, her spirit, her intellect, it was all there, and because that’s what she loved, so. She’s a powerful example of not quitting.

Read A F*cking Book: “Stranger On Lesbos” Reminds Us How Far We’ve Come and What Hasn’t Changed

June was LGBT Pride Month, so we decided to extend our pride all summer long by feeding babies to lions! Just kidding, we’re talking about lesbian history, loosely defined as anything that happened in the 20th century or earlier, ’cause shit changes fast in these parts. We’re calling it The Way We Were, and we think you’re gonna like it. For a full index of all “The Way We Were” posts, click that graphic to the right there.

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I was excited to review Stranger On Lesbos, a re-released pulp fiction novel by Valeria Taylor coming to the entire world in 2012 via the Feminist Press. The Femmes Fatales effort they conduct brings generous amounts of retro women’s writing back into our hands, thus allowing us to fondly and not-so-fondly remember the days of yore.

Strangers is the first of a small and short series of books by Taylor focusing around the same central crew of characters.

In Stranger, we become well-acquainted with Francis, a woman suffering from Betty Friedan’s “problem with no name.” Her husband, Bob, has finally hit great success in his sales career, which has resulted in presumed affairs and a new sense of isolation for her in the wake of his heavy workload and recent relocation to Chicago. Her only son, Bill, is reaching adulthood and has a sense of independence making her feel purposeless, uneeded, and worse — bored and unhappy. She is completely unsatisfied; as a temporary solution she seeks out collegiate courses nearby to stimulate her mind and give her something to busy herself with.

What she finds is a new friend — Bake, a butch woman who wears lipstick and sits near her in an english class. They spark up a friendship over drinks, which is a typical recipe for lesbian disaster, and mere chapters later confess their love for one another in front of Bake’s fireplace.

Even as her romance with a woman unfolds, Francis (now called Frankie, of course) struggles with what that means in a culture where people of her variety seemingly do not exist. What you notice off the bat are the familiar faces in her new second life: the emotionally unstable lesbian and her endlessly loving caretaker, the subtle and sexy ex-girlfriend, the formerly-married lesbian head-over-heels with a hot mess, and Bake — the heavy drinking, intensely passionate, emotionally insulated, and tenderly manipulative love of her life.

Throughout a good portion of the book, Francis finds herself completely willing to sacrifice the past in an effort to seek out a new future. That is to say, one of picnics and long afternoons, a job and a new sense of independence and a stream of gay bars that she doesn’t care for but trudges along to in order to get Bake home safely. What she lacks, however, is the ability to formulate “the right time.” When, for example, does one announce to her husband and adult child, who by this point is at the brink of engagement, that she is surrendering her former title as Trophy Wife for the new title of Femme Trophy Partner? Bake is impatient and insecure about Francis’s inability to come right out and say it, pack up and leave, and move in to her apartment, and Francis finds that Bob makes her queasy and Bill makes her sad. And yet she doesn’t make the move.

The sense of isolation Francis had once felt in her home begins to transfer to her second life as she finds herself outside of normalcy and outside of the realm of understanding of most people. Her husband is inquisitive about her behavior; she has taken up drinking for the first time in her adulthood and often sleeps away. She is in one way protected by the ignorance of the times: unless she is in a gay bar or at some sort of lesbian party, she appears to be with “girlfriends” in the grandmother sense and not in the gay marriage sense — nobody assumes she is sexually or romantically interested in women when they see her on the street because it simply isn’t a possibility in the full expansions of their minds and the minds of an entire culture. But it is also the widespread lack of community, and lack of awareness and affirmation available to her that ultimately challenges her to hesitate, to pause, to ponder endlessly her ability to even embark on such a life full-time. Being queer is Francis’s second life, but her first life is one in which she has a rule book, role models and options. Throwing that away is hard and has tangible consequences for her family and herself.

Throughout Stranger, I found myself in-between the present and the past. There were times where I took big breaths and stared out the bus window and thought, “thank fucking god it is now and not then.” Times when Francis was told bluntly that her lifestyle was a freak choice, an alcohol-induced mistake, an embarrassment to her family. Times when she lacked the ability to seek refuge in any way, or had no one — absolutely no one — to talk to about what was happening in her heart and in her ever-more-lonely life. There were no allies and there was no community. There was simply Francis and her lush lesbian friends who were dating and fucking one another without regard for each other because there was nobody else to love.

In many ways, my revisit to fiction of the 1950’s made me realize even moreso why the movement is important, why our voices are important, why our existence is important. How far we have come.

But in many ways, people haven’t changed. The sun is still rising on hungover butches and their lipstick-stained cigarettes, and on unhappy closeted wives spending their time fidgeting their hands and pondering their next steps. There are too many of us worried still about how our families will feel, how our neighborhoods will react, how our leaders will proceed. As if any of that matters, as if how we feel and how easy it is to somehow disregard or fictionalize or mythologize it makes it any different to try to survive in this world as a weirdo queer.

Ultimately what I felt for Francis was a desire and need for a community, for understanding and for love. Francis is unique in that not many women with “the problem that has no name” turned to other women for their ultimate fulfillment from that problem, or at least not many that we heard of. Francis is unique because she exists in a time when she wasn’t supposed to exist, in a time which we commonly paint as being absent of people like us. But in the end she is exactly like us — shaped by circumstance, torn between what is safe and what is honest, melting with one touch and clinging to each meaningful moment to carry her through the imperfect and painful ones.

I am glad to be here with you in 2012. But I am glad someone was there in 1950.

Valerie Taylor’s work was deeply personal and her journey to writing it was her own life. The Feminist Press website states that with “the $500 proceeds of her first novel, Hired Girl (1953), Taylor bought a pair of shoes, two dresses, and hired a divorce lawyer.” That was just the beginning of a life and a legacy, and in many ways Francis embodied in Stranger Taylor’s own experiences as she grappled with her sexuality within her marriage and eventually made the decision Francis cannot make — the decision to fall endlessly, to plunge into something unknown and unstudied, to subscribe to something admonished and seemingly absent. To believe.

Listling Without Commentary: Things Women Said About Lesbianism In The 1976 Hite Report on Female Sexuality

In 1976, Shere Hite published The Hite Report, a monumental and groundbreaking study of female sexuality. Over 3,000 women between the ages of 14 and 78 participated, sharing their intimate feelings about sex. The book opened numerous eyeballs and enlightened many about the nature of female orgasms and masturbation.

8% of respondents said they preferred sex with women, and an additional 9% ID’ed as bisexual or reported having sexual experiences with both men and women. Hite noted that “one of the most striking points about the answers received to the other questionnaires was how frequently, even when it was not specifically asked, women brought up the fact that they might be interested in having sexual relations with another woman.”

The following lines are excerpts from testimonies given by the study’s respondents, as quoted in the section of The Hite Report entitled LESBIANISM. 

Excerpts From Women’s Testimonials On The 1976 Hite Report As Quoted In The section entitled “LESBIANISM”: 

1. “I have been brought up to believe women are more attractive and more beautiful and I am beginning to believe it.”

2. “I’ve slept with about twenty men and one woman. I found the woman much better.”

3. “Sex with a woman for me has involved pressing mound of Venus against mound of Venus on each other’s leg.”

4. “I’d love to massage a woman I liked and was turned on to, and then gradually arouse her sexually through massage and then slowly make love to her and then stop and talk, and then make love again, then sleep together. But I’d never have the nerve!”

5. “No woman has ever asked me ‘Didja come?’ They knew.”

6. “Once we made love in my parents’ bed in candlelight and discovered our love for each other as sexual women. Also once we made love all night in great passion and were soft and silly and warm, and great love was built that night. The difference with boys is it is much shorter.”

7. “I think I am a lesbian, which is not too helpful since I’m married.”

8. “If you dig another woman, let her know — she may very well feel the same. If it freaks her out, talk to her about it — she needs to loosen up.”

9. “I want a woman lover — or more. I generally want closer relationships with women; I want to do all the things only men are supposed to do! I want to explore!!!”

10. “I think women often make love by talking a certain way, at least I do.”

11. “Some times I think I could go straight from deep mouth kissing to clitoral stimulation to have orgasm. It depends on my state of “readiness.” I like also to have my lover touch me very lightly, with her tongue and hands, all over my body, especially my buttocks and lower abdomen. There is no one ‘best’ way of clitoral stimulation — when she uses her mouth it’s no different than her fingers. Sometimes I like her mouth at first and then her finger, and the other times, just her mouth. Either her tongue gently flicking my clitoris, or her mouth sucking me hard, or her finger moving right above my clitoris in an increasingly rapid up and down movement, usually makes me orgasm. Sometimes she pushes her mouth hard against me and shakes her head rapidly from side to side — I orgasm this way also. One thing — I guess it’s easier for me if we start lovemaking with our clothes on and do not have more than a minute’s interruption for removal of clothes. Otherwise I get a little self-conscious.”

12. “Once we were hugging and kissing and starting to make love and all of a sudden she says, ‘What part of the world do armadillos live in?'”

13. “It is good simply to be with women. I could not have written that five years ago. I hated women, believed perfection was male and I looked like a fairly successful imitation of a Barbie doll. Except that I kept rejecting Kens.”

14. “Liz, my roommate, and I have oftentimes made love when one of us has emotional problems.”

15.  “At seven, I used to become highly aroused fantasizing kissing a certain girlfriend. By about twelve, I was fantasizing necking with both sexes. By about fourteen, I wanted to fuck; or, more mysterious and exciting and forbidden, do whatever it was the lesbians did! Now I do. And it’s great.”

16. “I am currently thinking of lesbianism as an alternative to abstinence, and to men in general, because they are not very liberated sexually or emotionally or in any other way, and I can’t stand it any more!”

17. “Sex with a woman includes: touching, kissing, smiling, looking serious, embracing, talking, digital intercourse, caressing, looking, cunnilingus, undressing, remembering later, making sounds, sometimes gently biting, sometimes crying, and breathing and singing together.”

18. “I’ve yet to meet a lesbian who uses a dildo. I think that’s one great big male porno trip.”

19. “Lesbianism in my view is a far-out alternative to always being underneath some man and being a baby machine.”

20. “I believe that this is true for countless millions of wives, in spite of all the claims to orgasm, that they really don’t know what orgasm is… I was taken by surprise in a lesbian relationship [when] I experienced real, buffola total eclipse orgasm for the first time. Wow.”

21. “Once my heart had an orgasm when she was hugging me and looking at me and saying how she loved me. Hers did too.”

Six Ways that 1950s Butches and Femmes F*cked with Society, Were Badass

June is LGBT Pride Month, so we’re celebrating all of our pride by feeding babies to lions! Just kidding, we’re talking about lesbian history, loosely defined as anything that happened in the 20th century or earlier, ’cause shit changes fast in these parts. We’re calling it The Way We Were, and we think you’re gonna like it. For a full index of all “The Way We Were” posts, click that graphic to the right there.

Previously:

1. Call For Submissions, by The Editors
2. Portraits of Lesbian Writers, 1987-1989, by Riese
3. The Way We Were Spotlight: Vita Sackville-West, by Sawyer
4. The Unaccountable Life of Charlie Brown, by Jemima
5. Read a F*cking Book: “Odd Girls & Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in 20th-Century America”, by Riese
6. Before “The L Word,” There Was Lesbian Pulp Fiction, by Brittani
7. 20 Lesbian Slang Terms You’ve Never Heard Before, by Riese
8. Grrls Grrls Grrls: What I Learned From Riot, by Katrina
9. In 1973, Pamela Learned That Posing in Drag With A Topless Woman Is Forever, by Gabrielle
10. 16 Vintage “Gay” Advertisements That Are Funny Now That “Gay” Means “GAY”, by Tinkerbell
11. Trials and Titillation in Toronto: A Virtual Tour of the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives, by Chandra
12. Ann Bannon, Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Autostraddle Interview, by Carolyn
13. 15 Ways To Spot a Lesbian According To Some Very Old Medical Journals, by Tinkerbell
14. The Very Lesbian Life of Miss Anne Lister, by Laura L
15. The Lesbian Herstory Archives: A Constant Affirmation That You Exist, by Vanessa
16. I Saw The Sign: Queer Symbols Then and Now, by Keena
17. The Ladies Of Llangollen: Runaway Romantics In 18th Century Ireland, by Una
18. 15 Awesomely Named Yet Totally Defunct Lesbian Bars Of America, by Riese
19. 6 Special Ideas About What Lesbian Sex Is, 1900-1953, by Party In My Pants
20. Queering The Library: Collecting Downtown, Riot Grrrl, Feminism & You, by Vanessa
21. Six Ways that 1950s Butches and Femmes Fucked with Society, Were Badass, by Laura

Butches and femmes may have started to get a lot of flack in the ’70s for (allegedly) subscribing to heteronormative roles within their relationships, and nowadays, when I wear my requisite polka-dot dresses and heels, I might feel like screaming, “I’M NOT HER STRAIGHT FRIEND!” to everyone at every gay event, ever. But in the mid-twentieth century, butches and femmes ruled the roost (or at least the dyke bar scene), for better or for worse. They also paved the way for tons of fantastic lesbians, radical queers, revolutionary feminists, and really awful (and awesome) hairstyles that came after them. My thesis? They were totally badass.

1. Butches were butches, femmes were femmes…

The butch/femme system wasn’t just a sexual preference or a preferred style of dress; in most lesbian circles, it was a social imperative. It was most prominent in working-class circles, where the privilege of discretion was not so readily available as to the upper class; where butches could work in blue-collar jobs that didn’t require them to wear feminine clothing; and where both femmes and their more masculine counterparts tended not to have professional jobs in areas that would require them to project a particularly middle-class brand of moral “purity” (you can read all about this, by the way, in the fantastic Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold, by Kennedy and Davis, which my girlfriend lent to me and which she thinks I will be returning; she is wrong). Roles were generally fairly rigid, at least at the outset, and at least with the lights on. In fact, many gay women identified as butch or femme before, or even instead of, identifying as gay, homosexual, or lesbian. Butch-on-butch and femme-on-femme relationships were often kept hush-hush.

Personally I tend to cringe at anything that includes the word “imperative.” But the badass part about this? These were females. Women. With enough differences between them to eroticize them. To create an erotic system that was, in fact, all their own, with its own norms, values, and sexual practices and mores. Without Finn Hudson (I mean, dudes). Most butches weren’t trying to pass for men; they were trying to SURpass them. Perhaps even more importantly, a butch-femme pair, arm in arm on the street, was the number-one symbol of lesbianism, and maybe the only recognizable symbol of the lesbian community, of the era. To be butch or femme meant to be recognized by your own people. It meant visibility. It meant that you were known.

2. …except when they weren’t.

Creating your own system has its pitfalls, one of them being that you now have to operate within a system. As per usual, plenty of queer women subsequently fucked with said system, with femmes switching to butch (and vice versa) and back depending on the week, the evening, or the mood. The roles stayed the same (though butch-on-butch relationships, with the tight butch community formed at bars, were not uncommon either), but slipping in and out of them at will revealed their true fluidity.

The gender dance between butches and femmes themselves had its own issues; both sides were prone to jealousy, and, without the legal protections or social expectation of marriage, issues of control and adherence to monogamy abounded. The idea that femmes were passive recipients of anything, though, is verifiably ludicrous. Butches, with their questionable attire and mannerisms, were often under- or unemployed, and femmes often had to bring home the bacon–and many did so, willingly, choosingly.

3. They looked damn good.

The rest of the world may have thought butches, with their Duck’s Ass haircuts (no, really) and various manifestations of period male getups, were perverts or cheap imitations of men, but their femmes certainly didn’t, admiring the girls who came in from working on the railroad and at the factory and providing validation for the unthinkable. Femme fashion was closer to straight women’s fashion, with a little (or a lot) more glamour. Looks were important, but in a way that engendered a sense of pride in the give-and-take, unique system that had been created, and in a way that was also, according to my research, adorable. Vic, a butch interviewed for Boots of Leather, explains:

“You were very proud of your woman and the woman was very proud of her butch. The woman took care of her butch in the way she always looked good. If the butch looked bad it was your fault if she did…And you were proud of your woman. You wouldn’t take your woman out with a rag on her head and no makeup on…And you didn’t leave the house without her saying you look good. There was a very deep pride there.”

4. They got theirs.

Butches, at the time, were generally assumed to be stone, meaning that they gave pleasure and did the “doing,” without reciprocation in kind from their femme (though, again, behind closed doors was often a different story). This assumption has led to a lot of valid and important discussions about butches and body dysmorphia, sexual repression, and the like, though many butches interviewed for Boots of Leather claim to get all their sexual satisfaction from pleasing their lovers (really, y’all are great). The important part here is that women were enough, in and of themselves. Butch-femme eroticism shattered the illusion that there needed to be a male aggressor or initiator, or that that type of erotic tension couldn’t exist between two women. Femmes, like my personal high femme heroine Amber Hollibaugh, have waxed poetic about finding empowerment by putting themselves into a butch’s hands. Though femmes often made love to their butches as well, or switched roles, many preferred this conscious giving over of sexual power, and found a new kind of enjoyment in the focus on their own pleasure (a phenomenon that was at the time almost unheard of for women).

And you can’t talk about butches without talking about competition, with each other but also with straight men. While historically, straight men had been known to gain authority over their women with violence, butches saw the perceived competition as an opportunity to display their sexual prowess, and prided themselves on it. Society may have not wanted femmes to be in the arms of butches, but they often did when a butch took the time to really learn them, and to get them off–at a time when the (totally insane!) possibility of female orgasm was just beginning to be discussed in heterosexual marriage manuals (often as a burdensome process that required the man to bury his real urges and really, really try to want to give pleasure too, but, you know, baby steps).

5. And, like good lesbians, they processed it.

Girls who like girls like other girls who can impart knowledge. Butches and femmes were no exception, especially in the area of sex. Jeanne Cordova, author of When We Were Outlaws, has spoken about her own experiences with older butches growing up in the mid-twentieth-century, and how she learned to please a woman. Since femmes didn’t have to adhere to the same social norms as heterosexual women at the time, they weren’t expected to be virginal or inexperienced, nor were they expected to lay back and take whatever they were given. To the contrary, butches were often eager students of femmes as they were instructed on how to best please them sexually.

6. They defended their spaces. And made new ones.

The image of the “tough bar lesbian” may have been limiting in some ways, but it was also, unfortunately, necessary. Violence wasn’t uncommon, especially as suspicion about everyone from Communists to queers began to mount. Butches and femmes alike were not above confrontation to defend their spaces, physical and otherwise.

The “outlaw” status of butches and femmes made it possible to cross boundaries, too, though. Femmes, particularly African-American ones, often served as hostesses for buffets and house parties that bridged the gap between lesbians and gay men. Though full racial integration took many more years, Audre Lorde also noted the willingness of queer women to form new, more diverse spaces for butches and femmes in a time rife with tension:

“Lesbians were probably the only Black and white women in New York City in the fifties who were making any real attempt to communicate with each other; we learned lessons from each other, the values of which were not lessened by what we did not learn.”

Though the 1950s butch-femme scene may have been a veritable gender politics minefield, butch/femme dynamics offered (and offer) a different way of “being” woman, of “doing” female. Butches were not masculine females, women “playing at” maleness. Femmes were not merely the recipients of their desire, or women attracted to other women with a little more swagger (maybe, sometimes) and a few more pairs of slacks (maybe, sometimes) than they. Our language doesn’t give us the words to describe it yet, but Carol A. Queen may have said it best in butch-anthology-extraordinaire Dagger:

“Most importantly, a butch/femme couple is queer…In fact, the more gender differentiation in their relationship, the queerer they are.”

And that’s really, really badass.

Resources:
Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold. Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline Davis. Routledge, Inc.: New York, New York, 1993.
Dagger: On Butch Women. Ed. Lily Burana, Roxxie, Linnea Due. Cleis Press, Inc: Pittsburgh, PA, and San Francisco, CA, 1994.

Queering The Library: Collecting Downtown, Riot Grrrl, Feminism & You

June is LGBT Pride Month, so we’re celebrating all of our pride by feeding babies to lions! Just kidding, we’re talking about lesbian history, loosely defined as anything that happened in the 20th century or earlier, ’cause shit changes fast in these parts. We’re calling it The Way We Were, and we think you’re gonna like it. For a full index of all “The Way We Were” posts, click that graphic to the right there.

Previously:

1. Call For Submissions, by The Editors
2. Portraits of Lesbian Writers, 1987-1989, by Riese
3. The Way We Were Spotlight: Vita Sackville-West, by Sawyer
4. The Unaccountable Life of Charlie Brown, by Jemima
5. Read a F*cking Book: “Odd Girls & Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in 20th-Century America”, by Riese
6. Before “The L Word,” There Was Lesbian Pulp Fiction, by Brittani
7. 20 Lesbian Slang Terms You’ve Never Heard Before, by Riese
8. Grrls Grrls Grrls: What I Learned From Riot, by Katrina
9. In 1973, Pamela Learned That Posing in Drag With A Topless Woman Is Forever, by Gabrielle
10. 16 Vintage “Gay” Advertisements That Are Funny Now That “Gay” Means “GAY”, by Tinkerbell
11. Trials and Titillation in Toronto: A Virtual Tour of the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives, by Chandra
12. Ann Bannon, Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Autostraddle Interview, by Carolyn
13. 15 Ways To Spot a Lesbian According To Some Very Old Medical Journals, by Tinkerbell
14. The Very Lesbian Life of Miss Anne Lister, by Laura L
15. The Lesbian Herstory Archives: A Constant Affirmation That You Exist, by Vanessa
16. I Saw The Sign: Queer Symbols Then and Now, by Keena
17. The Ladies Of Llangollen: Runaway Romantics In 18th Century Ireland, by Una
18. 15 Awesomely Named Yet Totally Defunct Lesbian Bars Of America, by Riese
19. 6 Special Ideas About What Lesbian Sex Is, 1900-1953, by Party In My Pants
20. Queering The Library: Collecting Downtown, Riot Grrrl, Feminism & You, by Vanessa

Hey friends! Remember when I told you about the Lesbian Herstory Archives? Well now I’m going to tell you about another place that you might like if you are a queer-identified smart cookie who likes researching The Way We Were and holding things in your two little hands. This place is The Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University. It is not a lesbian-specific haven like the LHA, nor is it open to the public. However, I think it’s a very important resource for scholars and regular humans doing queer studies. It’s also relevant to examine how these pieces of queer history found their way into a large academic institution. Full disclosure, I went to NYU for my undergraduate degree, and that’s how I learned that this formidable archive exists.

Once upon a time, New York University had a rare book collection that included about 150,000 volumes. The Fales Collection, as it was called, included rare books and manuscripts of English and American literature and was given to NYU in 1957 by DeCoursey Fales, in memory of his father Haliburton Fales. That specific collection is now one of several all housed under the same roof on the third floor of NYU’s Bobst Library. Officially named The Fales Library and Special Collections, it has grown to include The Downtown Collection and The Riot Grrrl Collection, effectively making it a great hub for scholars interested in using primary resources dealing with feminism, punk activism, queer theory, gender theory, the downtown New York scene, DIY culture, and music history.

Marvin J. Taylor is the current director of Fales and editor of The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974-1984. I first met Marvin when he spoke to my Queer Literature class in 2009, but I recently sat down with him to discuss how Fales Library and Special Collections became such an obvious home for queer artifacts, why Kathleen Hanna decided to donate all her original papers to start the Riot Grrrl Collection, and what he means when he says “a thing is a slow event.” Here’s an abbreviated version of our conversation.

What inspired The Downtown Collection?

Marvin: [Fales] was really a rare book collection when I got here [in 1993]. I saw that there were all these area studies developing, like gender studies, performance studies, Asian American studies…all these areas that were breaking down traditional discipline boundaries. I thought, ‘hmm, I need to provide material to support that kind of research.’ I knew about the stuff that was happening downtown in the seventies and eighties, so I thought, ‘I bet there are collections out there.’

What does the collection look like today, almost ten years later?

Marvin: We have somewhere around 15,000 printed items, 12,000 linear feet of archival material, and 70,000 media elements. It’s the only collection of its kind and it’s the largest collection [at Fales]. I couldn’t have brought this material into any other institution that I’ve worked at because the content is just too edgy.

Can you talk about some of the most interesting queer-identified women who have work in Fales?

Marvin: Okay, obviously Kathy Acker. She’s one of my favorite writers and I like to say every queer child should read Blood and Guts in High School. In some ways it’s a bildungsroman about Janie trying to find her own voice and I love that it’s very experimental. I think it has a lot of truth in it.

If we’re going to use the word queer, there are other writers who aren’t lesbians who I’d like to include. I really love Lynne Tillman and her book Haunted Houses from the early eighties. It’s the story of three different women who are coming of age and how they negotiate the performance of their own identity. I often teach it alongside Acker; they were friends.

Historically, we have a very interesting collection: the papers of Elizabeth Robins. She was an actress in Boston and she married an actor. She probably became pregnant and probably had an abortion because she wanted to continue her career. Her husband killed himself, probably because of her abortion. We have the suicide note. She kept it. She kept everything…later in life, she had relationships with women, some which were creative and some that were like Boston marriages, including a long-term relationship with Octavia Wilberforce [that lasted] until the end of Octavia’s life. She knew just about everyone from Edgar Allen Poe to Oscar Wilde to Virginia Woolf, and she was a huge force in the suffragette movement. She’s someone a lot of people don’t know about but she led a totally fascinating life and a lot can be said about different kinds of queerness in the 19th and early 20th centuries through her work.

[Please note, Wikipedia totally denies that Elizabeth Robins ever had any kind of Sapphic relations. However, I personally trust Marvin more than I trust Wikipedia. But I just thought you should know.]

We also have comics from Hothead Paisan, Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist. I always adored that work. And of course we have the Riot Grrrl Collection.

Yes! Can you tell me how that originated?

Marvin: Lisa Darms, my senior archivist, started that collection three years ago. She said, ‘I think we should start a riot grrrl collection because it’s absolutely related to punk and their activism seems a lot like the other kinds of activism we’ve collected. And Kathleen Hanna was my college roommate.’ It’s very heavily used now. Two or three people a week come in to consult the collection. I’m hesitant to speak about it though…Lisa is the expert.

[Lisa was kind enough to email back and forth with me despite the fact that she was literally on vacation while I was writing this article.]

Lisa: The idea first came up during the fall 2008 when I was interviewing for the position at Fales, and I brought Kathleen and Johanna Fateman to a Fales event that was about artists donating their papers to archives. Kathleen got really excited about the idea of a riot grrrl archive at that point, and it was something I’d always thought would be great. At that point it was just a hypothetical “what if” idea, but after I’d been at Fales for a while, I brought the idea up to Marvin, and said that Kathleen was interested in donating, and he was very excited about the idea and could see how it was a natural “sister” collection to the Downtown Collection.

The collection currently consists of 10 individual’s collections. Each collection is different, and reflects the type of activities each person was undertaking during the period, as well as what they kept. Some collections, like Kathleen’s, have a wide variety of materials, such as zine masters, handwritten lyrics, videos of performances, and photographs. Others, like the Tammy Rae Carland Zine Collection, consist entirely of zines, although most of the collections have both zines and associated material, such as correspondence from fans or people requesting zines from authors.

One might assume that as an archivist, Marvin worships physical things. However, in his email signature he includes a quote from Stanley Eveling: “A thing is just a slow event.” I asked him what he thought that meant.

Marvin: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, who teaches Performance Studies at NYU, said it to me once. I was showing her class some materials and talking about how they deteriorate, and how sometimes we can’t do anything about it. [The quote] totally changed how I think about what I do for a living. I had this burning desire, for whatever reason, to always preserve everything forever, which is of course impossible and very frustrating. And I suddenly began to understand objects as things that are based in time that can’t last forever…it freed me to understand why I do what I do and why I preserve materials. People can learn from them but they’re in process too, and we can’t save everything no matter how hard we try. Some things will just go their natural cycle and disappear. It was soothing in a way.

Finally, how can someone visit Fales if they are not an NYU student?

Marvin: If you’re in the New York area you can apply to come in. You don’t have to be an NYU student or a student anywhere. If you’re writing something, you can apply to us for access. We have a lot of independent scholars coming in all the time.

Lisa: We have a very broad understanding of what ‘research’ is. We’ve had [traditional] scholars working on things like feminist manifestos, college students working on papers about zines or veganism and punk, but also an artist looking at the aesthetics of riot grrrl zines and flyers to inform her own paintings, and a fashion designer looking at zines to inform her own zine.

If, like me, your goal in life is to find a project that will validate you spending hours upon hours at Fales, pouring over primary resources like Acker’s essay on the benefits of electing Prince for President and Johanna Fateman’s hate mail, then you no doubt feel thrilled by Lisa’s commentary. What is really most exciting is that not only will seasoned queer scholars work with these materials, but young undergraduate students–like myself in 2009–will stumble upon them completely by accident, and with that, new voices will be born into queer history.

I do wish the works were open for public viewing, but that’s impossible as they are part of a private university collection. And while it’s disappointing to be unable to visit the Riot Grrrl Collection whenever I please, I feel a sense of satisfaction that an established mainstream academic institution like NYU feels that these sources–pieces of our queer history–are important at all.

6 Special Ideas About What Lesbian Sex Is, 1900-1953

For centuries, human beings have been asking themselves and each other, “What is lesbian sex?”. It’s a popular question because lesbians are fascinating. This line of inquiry was also particularly challenging prior to this website’s publication of the “Is It Sex?” flowchart.

Even more challenging is how it wasn’t ever lesbians who informed the public of what lesbian sex consisted of, it was almost always straight white men. Imagine that! Now we proudly introduce to you some early ideas about lesbian sex, 1900-1953!

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What Makes Lesbian Sex, 1900-1953

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1. College-Bred Cunni-Linguistics

From a medical work, early 1900s (via Odd Girls & Twilight Lovers):

“When young girls are thrown together in a college setting they manifest an increasing affection by the usual tokens. They kiss each other fondly on every occasion. They embrace each other with mutual satisfaction. It is most natural, in the interchange of visits, for them to sleep together. They learn the pleasure of direct contact, and in the course of their fondling they resort to cunni-linguistic practices… after this the normal sex act fails to satisfy [them].”

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2. Girl-on-Girl Nymphomania

Swiss Psychiatrist August Forel, The Sexual Question: A Scientific, Psychological, Hygienic and Sociological Study, 1906:

“The [sexual] excess of female inverts exceed those of a male. This is their one thought, night and day almost without interrupton.” +

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3. Mutual Masturbation Petticoat Party

Sociologist Alfredo Niceforo, 1900s:

“In summer, in one work-room, some of the girls wear no drawers, and they unbutton their bodices, and work with crossed legs, more or less uncovered. In this position the girls draw near and inspect one another, some boast of their white legs, and then the petticoats are raised altogether for more careful comparison. From midday until 2 pm, durng the hours of greatest heat, when all are in this condition, and the mistress, in her chemsie (and sometimes, with no shame at the workers’ presence, without it), falls asleep on the sofa, all the girls, without one exception, masturbate themselves. The heat seems to sharpen their desires and morbidly arouse all their senses. The voluptuous emotions, restrained through the rest of the day, break out with irresistible force; stimulated by the spectacle of each other’s nakedness, some place their legs together and thus heighten the spasm by the illusion of contact with a man.”

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4. Cuddling and/or Cunnilingus

Psychologist Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex: Sexual Inversion, 1901:

“[The ‘inverted woman”s passion for the woman she loves] finds expression in sleeping together, kissing, and close embraces, with more or less sexual excitement, the orgasm sometimes ocurring when one lies on the other’s body or else in mutual masturbation; the extreme gratification is cunnilingus, sometimes called sapphism.”

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5. No Strings Attached

Novelist Diana Frederics, 1930s:

“It was natural enough that the homosexual would approach intimacy more quickly than the normal person. The very lack of any kind of social recognition of their union gave it a kind of informality. Normal love, having to consider property and children, had to assume responsibilities that were of no consequence to the homosexual. “

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6. Straight Girls Wanna Do It Like Gay Girls Do It, However That Is

Alfred Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in The Human Female, 1953:

“Females in their heterosexual relationships are actually more likely to prefer techniques which are closer to those which are commonly utilized in homosexual relationships. They would prefer a considerable amount of generalized emotional stimulation before there is any specific sexual contact. They usually want physical stimulation of the whole body before there is any specific genital contact. They may especially want stimulation of the clitoris and the labia minora, and stimulation which, after it has once begun, is followed through to orgasm…”

In conclusion, we have Phyllis Lyon in the intro to Pat Califia’s book Sapphistry, published in 1988:

“Virtually every book on human sexuality still proclaims the un-fact that Lesbians are really not so much interested in sex or orgasm as they are in hugging and kissing a lot. This kind of misinformation is a direct attack on all women’s sexuality… Our sexuality is a basic part of our being. Exploring our sexuality with our partners, or with ourselves, nourishes and nurtures us. It gives us joy, physical release, a feeling of well-being which serves to strengthen us as we go out into the world to fight those other battles so necessary to insure the freedom of us all from the bigotry, hatred and misunderstanding of those who would deny us not only our sexuality but our very right to existence.”

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15 Awesomely Named Yet Totally Defunct Lesbian Bars Of America

The website Lost Womyn’s Space is devoted to honoring both ancient and modern womyn’s spaces that have been lost — “anything from lost women’s colleges and schools, to lesbian bars and clubs. And everything sacred and profane in between” — and it’s a website I’d recommend becoming obsessed with, as I am. Silverside, the captain of Lost Womyn’s Space, has done serious research to unearth the stories of more lesbian bars than probably currently exist in the world. All the information in this post, unless otherwise noted, was garnered from that blog.

15 Awesomely Named Yet Totally Closed Lesbian Bars Of America

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1. Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness (2900 E.Broadway Blvd, Tucson, AZ) 1994-2011

I feel like the idea here is that if your homophobic mother asks you where you’re going, you can say “ain’t nobody’s bizness.”

This hotspot, located in a shopping plaza, began as a lesbian bar and eventually evolved to attract a “mixed-gender” crowd and closed shortly thereafter because MEN RUIN EVERYTHING. Just kidding (kinda), I don’t know why it closed, do you?

When it snagged the 1999 Best Lesbian Bar Award from The Tucson Weekly, the Weekly professed: “The Biz is Tucson’s lesbian Cheers, but with hip music, a good dance floor and an Amazon attitude.”

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2. Volli-Bal (2124 North Clark St, Chicago, IL) 1950s-60s

This bar had a very strict butch/femme culture and often found itself subject to random police raids — both common situations at the time. More importantly, the creators of this bar discovered a new way to spell “volleyball,” a sport beloved by lesbians because volleyball players tend to wear tiny outfits and have strong fists!

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3. Our Hideaway (Chicopee, MA) 1949 -1999

I like to imagine this name came from the secret name for a private tree fort where the bar’s owner used to meet her romantic friend for cuddling after school. Yannow?

Anyhow, Our Hideaway was once the oldest women’s bar on the east coast, frequented both by college kids new to the area and locals who’d been partrons for 25 years!

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4. Kooky’s Cocktail Lounge (W. 14th Street, New York, NY) 1960s to early 1970s

One of only two lesbian bars in the city at that time, it seems like everybody who went to Kooky’s mostly hated it. Karla Jay, in her book The Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation, tells tales of a hostile owner dressed in complicated pastel prom gowns who would harass clientele into buying more drinks (eventually turning everybody into an alcoholic), a bathroom guard who parceled out three squares of toilet paper to each guest while ensuring no couples snuck in and an intimidating entrance/carding procedure administered by male doormen. (The toilet paper situation wasn’t unique to this bar, however, this was a common strategy.)

“The bar lesbians were in no position to rebel against Kooky’s dictatorship,” Jay writes. “Instead, they put their energy into creating a network of friends and allies within the bar.”

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5. Never Never Land (1920 Market Street, Shreveport, Louisiana) 2005 to 2010

Inspired, undoubtedly, by how cute Mary Martin was when she played Peter Pan in the 1956 live action film “Peter Pan,” this girlbar dive with noted karaoke promised its customers: “Come with me now to a far off land across a briny sea, to a place where you can laugh and play and fly your heart so free.”

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6. Meow Mix (269 East Houston, New York, NY) 1996 to 2004

“Meow Mix with its never-got-over-riot-grrrl-grunge is hot nearly every night of the week. Lipstick lesbians and butch drag queens swarm the dance floor or rock as live acts perform.”

Firstly, this name sounds like cat food. Secondly, perhaps the saddest introduction to my budding bisexual lifestyle came on a warm Pride Sunday in 2004, when I nervously tagged along to Meow Mix with a group of lesbians I’d met up with earlier ’cause one of them had been my roommate in boarding school. I was debating the whole way if I would actually go into the bar or not, but alas, my debating was all for naught — the place was closed like a book. Everyone was so confused and sad. Little did I know that later in life, as a lesbian, the experience of walking 16 blocks to a gay bar that turned out to be closed was par for the course. Apparently there were problems with “flooding, city harassment, and a shift in the neighborhood demographics.” The bar also played a cameo in Chasing Amy.

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7. Tink’s Pub (22 South Preston Street, Louisville, KY) 2001- 2012

I imagine some of you have visited Tink’s Pub and can verify whether or not it’s owned by my pet dog, Tinkerbell, who has always dreamed of starting her very own Pub. Regardless, Tink’s boasted karaoke, drag shows, pool, video poker, darts and a jukebox, and had its closing night party on New Year’s Eve 2011.

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8. Hot Legs (814 South Second Street, Milwaukee, WI) 1984-1987

I imagine the name “Hot Legs” was inspired by a naked girl with nice legs. “For a time Hot Legs was THE lesbian bar in Milwaukee,” says the Wisconsin GLBT History Project. Indeed, Hot Legs was well ahead of its time when it began offering those always-tantalizing wet t-shirt contests!

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10. Huddle Tavern (219 Cumberland Ave, Knoxville, TN) 1940-1981

1. Rhymes with CUDDLE!

2. Cormac McCarthy “immortalized” this bar, which was located in a basement, by writing about it in his novel Sutree. He cited patrons coming “down the street and turning in two by two” and spotting “a group of dubious gender” drinking in a corner. The place served beer in a fishbowl and whiskey in a jelly jar! Neat-o!

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11. The Kitty Kat Club (St.Louis, MO) 1960s-1970s

This bar name is genius for marrying the memory of Kit Porter to the sexiness of the Kit-Kat Girls from “Cabaret” to the cuteness of actual kittens (lesbians love cats: fact). That’s just about all we know, and I just made that up, so.

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12. Plush Pony (Los Angeles, CA) 1960s–> 2009

A hotspot for “Chicana dykes” and “lesbian Latinas” is cited in Gay L.A. as one of many “working class gay girl beer-and-pool-table bars” that popped up around the city in 1960s. The amazing lesbian photographer Laura Aguilar did a series in back of the bar, creating “an amazing document of working-class Chicana lesbian culture, a group whose existence is relegated to the margins of both Chicana and lesbian social formations.” The photo above is from that series. Seriously I love Laura Aguilar so much.

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13. Howdy Club (47 West Third Street, New York, NY) – 1930s -1940s

Lisa E. Davis says: “The Howdy Club is the earliest club we know about that hired lesbians as entertainers — strippers, singers like Blackie Dennis, and chorus boys who might serve the first round of drinks, then join the floorshow.” The Howdy Club closed because of “morals changes,” a/k/a excessive police harassment in the mid-to-late 40’s.  They also had a football team (pictured, above).

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14. The Sea Colony (52 West 8th, New York, NY) 1950s-1960s

I feel like this’d also be a good name for a restaurant in Disneyworld with singing little mermaids. But it’s not a restaurant in Disneyworld, it was a mega-popular often-working-class lesbian bar patronized by ladies like Joan Nestle and even Audre Lorde. Patrons could dance in the back room, where a red light started flashing to indicate a police raid in the works.

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15. Mother’s Brew (Louisville, KY) 1975-1976

Honestly when I go to gay bars the last thing I want to think about is my mother, especially since she started going to gay bars before I did, but this lesbian separatist hangout rocked the hell out of that brew, just like your mom does. Started by the Lesbian Feminist Union collective, Mother’s Brew was a bar but also a meeting space AND a venue for lectures and women’s music AND a shelter for battered women AND a feminist library AND an art gallery. Alix Dobkin, Holly Near and Cris Williamson performed here, amongst others. The no-men-allowed thing was very serious here.

Amazing Defunct Lesbian Bar Names Honorable Mentions:

MoDiggity’s Pub (Salt Lake City, Utah) – 2000s

Cowgirl’s Oasis (Fort Worth, Texas) – 1995-96

Billie Jean’s (Kansas City, MO) – 1980s

Tiny & Ruby’s Gay Spot (Chicago, IL) – 1950s

Bonnie & Clyde’s (New York, NY) – 1970s/80s

Attitudes (St.Louis, MO) – 1988-2012

Pandora’s Box (Detroit, MI) – 2005-2008

Bad Dolly’s (Reno, NV) – 1990s

Madison Flame (Memphis, TN) -1990s – 2007

 What are your favorite lesbian bar names?

The Ladies Of Llangollen: Runaway Romantics In 18th Century Ireland

June is LGBT Pride Month, so we’re celebrating all of our pride by feeding babies to lions! Just kidding, we’re talking about lesbian history, loosely defined as anything that happened in the 20th century or earlier, ’cause shit changes fast in these parts. We’re calling it The Way We Were, and we think you’re gonna like it. For a full index of all “The Way We Were” posts, click that graphic to the right there.

Previously:

1. Call For Submissions, by The Editors
2. Portraits of Lesbian Writers, 1987-1989, by Riese
3. The Way We Were Spotlight: Vita Sackville-West, by Sawyer
4. The Unaccountable Life of Charlie Brown, by Jemima
5. Read a F*cking Book: “Odd Girls & Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in 20th-Century America”, by Riese
6. Before “The L Word,” There Was Lesbian Pulp Fiction, by Brittani
7. 20 Lesbian Slang Terms You’ve Never Heard Before, by Riese
8. Grrls Grrls Grrls: What I Learned From Riot, by Katrina
9. In 1973, Pamela Learned That Posing in Drag With A Topless Woman Is Forever, by Gabrielle
10. 16 Vintage “Gay” Advertisements That Are Funny Now That “Gay” Means “GAY”, by Tinkerbell
11. Trials and Titillation in Toronto: A Virtual Tour of the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives, by Chandra
12. Ann Bannon, Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Autostraddle Interview, by Carolyn
13. 15 Ways To Spot a Lesbian According To Some Very Old Medical Journals, by Tinkerbell
14. The Very Lesbian Life of Miss Anne Lister, by Laura L
15. The Lesbian Herstory Archives: A Constant Affirmation That You Exist, by Vanessa
16. I Saw The Sign: Queer Symbols Then and Now, by Keena
17. The Ladies Of Llangollen: Runaway Romantics In 18th Century Ireland, by Una

In 18th century, an affair scandalised Ireland. Eleanor Butler was the daughter of the most powerful family in the country, the Butlers of Kilkenny Castle, one of the finest (still standing) castles in the country. Sarah Ponsonby was an orphan 16 years younger than her who was attending a nearby girl’s school. They became friends, and then hooked up. Too bad that wasn’t an option in the society and time they were living in. But they were determined to be with each other, and the only way that could happen was by getting the hell out of Dodge.

After their first escape failed, Eleanor and Sarah were sent to separate houses. By then, Eleanor’s family said she “had a debauched mind” (party on) and Sarah said she “wanted to live and die with Eleanor Butler”. Such statements meant that their relationship was being increasingly examined.

If you a picture a society that was beyond uptight, ruled by convention, class, religion and stifling familial duties and a strictly determined destiny amongst the castle-dwelling aristocracy, the idea that these two women would be in love with each other, never mind being involved in a sexual relationship was beyond comprehension.

At that time in Ireland, letter writing was the only form of communication with mail deliveries happening multiple times between houses and castles every day. Many of these letters between Eleanor and Sarah themselves and their surrounding guardians remain, illustrating the confused concerns their families had and indeed their love for each other. Two women of their class would have to marry men and carry on the lineage of Anglo-Irish aristocracy. They had no other option but to try to escape again. This time, they succeeded. Eleanor left her sister’s house in the middle of the night and walked 12 miles to Sarah, with the assistance of her servant Mary.

They crossed the Irish Sea to Wales, and came upon a stone house in Llangollen. They developed ‘The System’, a system that meant they would turn their backs on traditional society, rarely leave home, develop a sustainable way of living through self-sufficiency, growing their own vegetables and fruit and building a dairy, as well as giving 10% of their income to charity. Essentially, they were embarking on a queer DIY lifestyle.

They refurbished their house in gothic style, with intricate carvings and other cool stuff. Eventually, they got a name for being awesome and visiting writers such as William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron came to hang out. They became The Ladies Of Llangollen.

They died within two years of each other in 1829 and 1832.

This radio documentary by Irish national radio station RTE illustrates their amazing story with brilliant sensitivity. Listen to An Extraordinary Affiar.

I Saw The Sign: LGBT Symbols Then And Now

You’re sitting in your day parlor, sipping a cup of tea and needlepointing a screen with your female relatives. Then, a maid enters the parlor and informs you that you have a visitor waiting for you in the drawing room. You excuse yourself and enter the drawing room where you find Elizabeth Bennett, holding a bouquet of violets that she picked just for you.

Hi, everyone! Welcome to my fantasy. For years I’ve daydreamed about what gift Elizabeth Bennett might bring me to express her true intentions (which ranged from a beautifully-written letter sealed in wax to a corgi puppy in basket), but now I know she would bring me violets. Violets are beautiful and adorable flowers in general, but they’re also one of the more famous symbols of female homosexuality, possibly dating back to a poem in which Sappho describes herself and her lover wearing garlands of violets:

If you forget me, think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared

all the violet tiaras
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck

In the early 20th century, women used to give each other violets as a way of telling each other, “Hey, I LIKE like you,” in times when it wasn’t easy or accepted to say so in a more overt manner. And, though the historic origins of the violet as a symbol of women liking women may have faded, the color purple is still often associated with homosexuality, particularly in the naming of the Lavender Menace and in the use of the term “lavender lads” to describe gay men during the “Lavender Scare” in the 1950s in the U.S.

Sadly, as we all know, it’s only recently that open displays of homosexuality have begun to be accepted by society, and obviously there are still many places in the world where they are still met with disapproval, violence, and/or legal and social persecution. But! The good thing is that even in unfriendly societies, us homos have always managed to find our way to each other (call it the silver lining in the lavender cloud, if you will). We’ve done so in a variety of ways, though visual symbols are often among the most recognizable. Some of these symbols may be familiar to you, but even if they aren’t, perhaps they’ll give you an idea of how to decorate your messenger bag or expand your tattoo sleeve.

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The Greek Symbol “Lambda”

Lambda was selected as a symbol by the Gay Activists Alliance of New York in the 1950s and was declared the international symbol for gay and lesbian rights by the International Gay Rights Congress in 1974. It’s unclear how exactly lambda was adopted by the LGBT community or what it actually means but some popular theories include: the charged energy of the gay and lesbian rights movement (since lambda symbolizes “energy” in chemistry and physics), the Roman interpretation meaning “the light of knowledge shining into the darkness of ignorance,” or “the notion of being on different wavelengths when it comes to sex and sexuality.” There’s also this idea kicking around that lambda appeared on the shields of Spartan and/or Theban warriors in ancient Greece. The Thebes version is more popular because, as legend has it, the city-state organized the Theban Army from groups of idealized lovers, which made them exceptionally fierce and dedicated soldiers–though eventually the army was completely decimated by King Philip II, the father of Alexander the Great. Lending credence to this theory is the fact that the 1962 version of “300” depicted soldiers with lambdas on their shields. I never saw the 2006 version so someone else will have to confirm or deny the perpetuity of lambda in that whole situation.

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The Rainbow Flag(s)

In the 1970s, San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker recognized the need for a gay symbol that could be used during the Pride Parade each year. Baker drew inspiration for the first version of the iconic rainbow flag from a variety of sources and came up with a flag with eight color stripes, each representing a different aspect of gay and lesbian life: hot pink for sexuality, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for the sun, green for nature, blue for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit. Baker and 30 volunteers hand-dyed and stitched the original flag, but had to remove the pink stripe for mass production due to a lack of commercially-available pink dye. When Harvey Milk was assassinated later that year, the 1979 Pride Parade Committee selected Baker’s flag as the symbol for the gay community to unite in honor of Milk’s memory.

In the 1979 San Francisco Pride Parade, the color indigo was also removed so the colors could be evenly-distributed along the parade route, leaving us with the flag we know today, with stripes of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. Today, there are many, many varieties of the rainbow flag–you can stick a lambda on it, a colored triangle, a star of David, whatever you want! People seem particularly fond of the rainbow flag/rainbows in general because they are all-encompassing: a rainbow flag endorses gay rights without making a statement about the person displaying it. And this, to me, is the most rockin’ thing about rainbow flags. If you chose not to, you don’t have to say anything about yourself, your sexytime partners, your experiences, thoughts or feelings–you’re just rocking a rainbow, and under the rainbow we’re all family. Rainbow flags and stickers are often used to denote gay-friendly businesses, gay-friendly health facilities and really, who doesn’t want to paint their face in rainbow colors and go to a parade filled with like-minded rainbow-philes? No one, that’s who. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a member of the LGBT community or simply a supporter of gay rights, rainbows mean love for everyone and are therefore wonderful.

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Black Triangles

One of the oldest symbols associated with the LGBT community is the triangle, which originated as one of the symbols used in Hitler’s Nazi concentration camps as a way to label prisoners: male homosexual prisoners were made to wear a pink triangle, while women imprisoned for “arbeitsscheu” (“antisocial behavior”, including feminism, lesbianism and prostitution) were made to wear black triangles. Though there isn’t definitive evidence to prove that the black triangles were worn by lesbians in the same way that pink triangles were worn by gay male prisoners, over time the black triangle has evolved into one of the more prominent symbols of lesbianism, contemporaneously symbolizing defiance against repression and discrimination.

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Labrys

I know you all totally know what a labrys is already, but juuuust in case you don’t: a labrys is a double-headed axe. The labrys was first associated with the Greek goddesses Artemis (goddess of the hunt) and Demeter (goddess of the harvest) and used in battle by Scythian Amazon warriors. The Amazons ruled with a dual-queen system and were known for being ferocious in battle. Though the labrys originally stood for independence/strength/chopping prowess, it has also been appropriated as a symbol of lesbianism.

Note from commenter Nancy: The labrys is actually even older than Artemis as goddess of the hunt, it goes all the way back to the Minoan civilization on crete around the 15th century BCE, although we are not really sure what it meant then because it is sooo long ago! And while there were definitely women warriors in Scythia and nearby regions, it’s super speculative that they had the whole two-queen system and everything…that comes out of some quasi-history written by guys like Herodotus.

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Double Venus

The double Venus symbol takes the scientific symbol for “female” (or “Venus”) and doubles it–two females = girl and girl; Bette and Tina; Ellen and Portia, etc.

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Bisexuality Symbols

In 1998, the official Bisexuality Flag was designed by Michael Page to represent the bisexual community. The magenta stripe represents same-sex attraction and the blue stripe at the bottom represents opposite-sex attraction, while the smaller deep lavender (lavender!) stripe in the middle represents attraction to both genders. Overlapping pink and blue triangle are also used to symbolize bisexuality.

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Transgender Symbols

In 2000, Monica Helms designed the first Transgender Pride flag, which debuted at the Phoenix Pride Parade in Arizona. Helms planned the flag to represent the spectrum of trans* experience. “The light blue is the traditional color for baby boys, pink is for girls, and the white in the middle is for those who are transitioning, those who feel they have a neutral gender or no gender, and those who are intersex. The pattern is such that no matter which way you fly it, it will always be correct. This symbolizes us trying to find correctness in our own lives.” Another popular symbol used to identify members of the the transgender community comes from the same roots as the double Venus: a circle with an arrow projecting from the top-right, as per the male symbol, and a cross projecting from the bottom, as per the female symbol, with an additional striked arrow (combining the female cross and male arrow) projecting from the top-left.

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The Other Stuff

Purple Rhinoceros: In the 1970s gay activists in Boston chose the rhinoceros as their symbol because, like the gay rights movement, while the rhino is often misunderstood it is actually a docile and intelligent animal until it is attacked–at which point it’s probably going to steamroll your car. And guess what? It’s purple. Bam. Purple rhino.

Hare, Hyena and Weasel: These three animals were mentioned in an apocryphal text of the Bible, Barnabus, in which God warns against eating the flesh of the hare (associating it with anal sex), the hyena, which was at the time was believed to change gender once a year, and the weasel, which was associated with lesbian sex. Why? Who knows. Look how cute, though!

Thumb Rings: Popular culture seems to believe that if a woman wears a silver thumb ring, she’s telling the world she’s a big ole lesbian–though there seems to be some confusion over whether to wear it on the left or right thumb and what that signifies.

Purple String: In some places, wearing a piece of purple string or hemp around your wrist is a sign of liking other girls: wear it on your left wrist if you are single, right if you are in a relationship. But then sometimes girls from the UK say that this is reversed in Europe, adding to the dilemma of what to do when you go to London on vacay.

Sign Language for “Lesbian”: On one forum I read, a girl said that she and her friends signal “lesbian” by the American Sign Language sign,” which involves making your thumb and forefinger into an ‘L’ and sticking your chin between the two. I find this amusing and wonderful and will use it all the time.

Nautical Star Tattoo: In the 1940s, many lesbians got a nautical star tattooed on their inner wrist to advertise their sexuality. But then so did sailors and punk rockers. Not that the groups are mutually exclusive by any means (if you are lesbian sailor punk rocker, I want to meet you). What does seem to be a defining feature of tattoos indicating lesbianism is that they were often on the inner wrist, so ladies could cover them up with a watch during the day and expose them at night when they were out.

Also, dolphins: In almost every online discussion I read, some sad-sounding girl would chime in to ask, “I thought dolphins were symbols of lesbianism. What about dolphins?” Um, PREACH. Lack of historic precedent be damned, I say if we want dolphins, we can have dolphins. DOLPHINS!

LGBT symbols are ever-evolving as time, culture and civil rights allow. While it’s crucial to give a nod to the historic significance of using LGBT symbols during times and in places where one had to be covert, the use of symbols, raised some interesting questions that maybe you have thoughts about. How effective is an LGBT symbol if members of the community may not recognize what it means? At what point do “symbols” merge into the larger topic of gaydar?

It really depends on what you want, whether it be acknowledging the struggle of the past, your personal feelings about your own present, or pride in and of itself. In the end symbolism and the use of symbols is just that–it’s the user of the symbol who gives it meaning and significance. Ultimately it’s a pretty wonderful thing that in many places, we don’t have to use symbols to say what we mean and feel. But I’m just sayin’–if I see a girl with an Autostraddle ‘A’ sticker on her laptop, I’m going over to say hi.

When After School Specials Made Gay People Seem Not-So-Special

June is LGBT Pride Month, so we’re celebrating all of our pride by feeding babies to lions! Just kidding, we’re talking about lesbian history, loosely defined as anything that happened in the 20th century or earlier, ’cause shit changes fast in these parts. We’re calling it The Way We Were, and we think you’re gonna like it. For a full index of all “The Way We Were” posts, click that graphic to the right there.

Previously:

1. Call For Submissions, by The Editors
2. Portraits of Lesbian Writers, 1987-1989, by Riese
3. The Way We Were Spotlight: Vita Sackville-West, by Sawyer
4. The Unaccountable Life of Charlie Brown, by Jemima
5. Read a F*cking Book: “Odd Girls & Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in 20th-Century America”, by Riese
6. Before “The L Word,” There Was Lesbian Pulp Fiction, by Brittani
7. 20 Lesbian Slang Terms You’ve Never Heard Before, by Riese
8. Grrls Grrls Grrls: What I Learned From Riot, by Katrina
9. In 1973, Pamela Learned That Posing in Drag With A Topless Woman Is Forever, by Gabrielle
10. 16 Vintage “Gay” Advertisements That Are Funny Now That “Gay” Means “GAY”, by Tinkerbell
11. Trials and Titillation in Toronto: A Virtual Tour of the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives, by Chandra
12. Ann Bannon, Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Autostraddle Interview, by Carolyn
13. 15 Ways To Spot a Lesbian According To Some Very Old Medical Journals, by Tinkerbell
14. The Very Lesbian Life of Miss Anne Lister, by Laura L
15. The Lesbian Herstory Archives: A Constant Affirmation That You Exist, by Vanessa
16. When After School Specials Made Gay People Seem Not-So-Special, by Riese

In 1986, HBO and some Canadian cable companies produced the After School-Special-style drama, The Truth About Alex, starring Peter Spence as Alex, an All-American football player and passionate pianist harboring a big scary secret… he’s a homosexual! Scott Baio co-stars Alex’s tough-guy best friend Brad Stevens, who also plays football. Brad has a mean military father with severe white hair who wants his son to get into West Point and not associate with homos. The setting is initially very wholesome, with lots of lawns, ponytail ribbons and girls in white pants, but then it gets really dark.

1986 might seem early for this kind of mainstreaming teen-oriented content, but after-school specials have always been permitted to “go there” because tackling a controversial issue is the genre’s explicit intention. So there we were on the television along with the drunk kids crashing cars into trees, sad pregnant teenage girls with abusive boyfriends and the rascals smoking joints in the schoolyard. Scott Baio was in a lot of After School specials, like All the Kids Do It, Stoned and The Boy Who Drank Too Much. They all seem so hilarious now, see:

The Truth About Alex is profoundly depressing. That’s the thing about these After School Specials, simply permitting the gay protagonist to survive or be passively accepted was considered progressive or even positive. For many young homosexuals, The Truth About Alex was the first time they saw themselves onscreen, and that was profound enough, and positive. But the real lesson of the film hides behind the ostensibly decent portrayal.  Because outside of those things — the survival, the eventual acceptance from a handful of friends or family — the life of a gay person was seen as a relentless and destructive battle against the world. If you come out, be prepared for everything to unravel around you.

Like if you’re gay, you’re actually a virus. You were wrong to think of yourself as a human being all this time, you’re not a human being! You’re a tornado, or a disease. That’s the topic of The Truth About Alex.

This movie was so stupid but also so brutally dark, which is a confusing combination of attributes, if you think about it. Stupidity is too stupid to be dark, usually. But this is. There’s a sliver of hope at the end, if you’re good at sports, kinda.

Here’s The Truth About Alex, part one. There’s also part two, three and four.

In The Truth About Alex, Alex is outed after he’s hit on by a guy in a truck stop who beats him up when Alex denies his advances. That’s how boys get outed — by their insatiable sex drives. Girls get outed when they fall in love with their best friend, or get married and have babies.

In 1987, the CBS Schoolbreak Special What If I’m Gay? portrayed a teenage guy named Todd who’s outed when his friends stumble upon his gay porn collection. Like The Truth About Alex, the gay guy is white and boring-looking and he plays sports and wears t-shirts. Charlotte York’s husband plays his best friend Allen. Charlotte York’s husband has a full head of bushy black hair. The gay guy has a bowl-cut and free weights in his bedroom and in one scene, he tells Charlotte York’s husband that he thinks he’s gay and Charlotte York’s husband is pretty cool about it. If these scenes were the only scenes of the movie, then this’d be an example of it being okay to be gay. Maybe it’s better that we only see these scenes.

What If I’m Gay? was nominated for three Daytime Emmy Awards and snagged one for Outstanding Direction in Children’s Programming.

In the 90s, it seemed like things were changing a lot in big cities, quite a bit in college towns and other liberal enclaves, and not so much in the rest of the country. Right? It’s hard to explain what things were like then for me, like in 1997 when Ellen came out and so did my Mom.

I lived in a college town packed with politically conscious academics and their nervous, weed-smoking, string-instrument-playing, Salinger-reading offspring — an inherently gay-friendly group of ambitious human beings, for sure. Where we lived things were… fine. It was okay to be gay. We were low on bias and discrimination, but intolerance and unease still simmered beneath it all. It was socially acceptable to be homophobic just as long as you didn’t do anything about it.

But things still happened in weirder, more insidious, nerve-wracking ways in allegedly tolerant environments. Stories that make headlines now about lesbians getting kicked out of prom or a restaurant or a coaching position were everyday events back then, par for life’s course. It felt like gays were allowed in the room, but they couldn’t be sure anybody wanted them there, and they could be certain somebody wished they weren’t. If the PTA at my public high school flipped out about a gay guy speaking at an assembly on diversity, I couldn’t imagine how much worse that would’ve gone down in a conservative part of the country.

In the CBS Schoolbreak Special Other Mothers, which aired in 1993, the two mothers of a fresh-faced teenaged son, played by Jimmy from Lois & Clark, hit up a booster club meeting at his new school. Jimmy kinda doesn’t want his friends to know about his two Moms though.

Joanna Cassidy plays his birth mother, Linda, and Meredith Baxter plays his other mother, Paula. The episode won three Daytime Emmys and was nominated for two.

The Two Moms are an inconspicuous pair, they blend in with their hair styled like fussy foliage, tasteful jewelry and faces full of Avon. So they aren’t kicked out of the booster club meeting or anything. But there’s this melodramatic unease everywhere. Then there’s this heavily-made-up woman in an assertive pink blazer who isn’t, you know, okay with the two moms. She shuns them at the meeting, but saves her most pointed attack for a private home visit. That’s when she tells Meredith Baxter that the booster club is only for “real parents,” not Other Mothers.

Meredith Baxter came out as a lesbian 16 years after Other Mothers was on the air. It was okay to play the role, but not to be the role.

The rest of the video isn’t online, but I think that things got much worse from there.

Next: More Than Friends: The Coming Out of Heidi Leiter (Claire Danes was in it!) and The Truth About Jane.

The Lesbian Herstory Archives: A Constant Affirmation That You Exist

June is LGBT Pride Month, so we’re celebrating all of our pride by feeding babies to lions! Just kidding, we’re talking about lesbian history, loosely defined as anything that happened in the 20th century or earlier, ’cause shit changes fast in these parts. We’re calling it The Way We Were, and we think you’re gonna like it. For a full index of all “The Way We Were” posts, click that graphic to the right there.

Previously:

1. Call For Submissions, by The Editors
2. Portraits of Lesbian Writers, 1987-1989, by Riese
3. The Way We Were Spotlight: Vita Sackville-West, by Sawyer
4. The Unaccountable Life of Charlie Brown, by Jemima
5. Read a F*cking Book: “Odd Girls & Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in 20th-Century America”, by Riese
6. Before “The L Word,” There Was Lesbian Pulp Fiction, by Brittani
7. 20 Lesbian Slang Terms You’ve Never Heard Before, by Riese
8. Grrls Grrls Grrls: What I Learned From Riot, by Katrina
9. In 1973, Pamela Learned That Posing in Drag With A Topless Woman Is Forever, by Gabrielle
10. 16 Vintage “Gay” Advertisements That Are Funny Now That “Gay” Means “GAY”, by Tinkerbell
11. Trials and Titillation in Toronto: A Virtual Tour of the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives, by Chandra
12. Ann Bannon, Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Autostraddle Interview, by Carolyn
13. 15 Ways To Spot a Lesbian According To Some Very Old Medical Journals, by Tinkerbell
14. The Very Lesbian Life of Miss Anne Lister, by Laura L
15. The Lesbian Herstory Archives: A Constant Affirmation That You Exist. by Vanessa

Hey you! Have you heard about this fantastic place called the Lesbian Herstory Archives? Autostraddle has written about the Archives in passing in several articles, but maybe you haven’t checked it out thoroughly yet? If you live in New York you need to go visit immediately, and if you live anywhere else you need to check out the adorable and comprehensive “virtual tour” offered on the Archives’ website. You’re going to love it, I promise.

The Lesbian Herstory Archives holds the world’s largest collection of materials by and about lesbians. This collection is housed in a brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and to say it goes above and beyond what you might think of when you hear the word “archive” is an understatement. The Archives has books, newsletters and photographs, but it also has unpublished papers, periodicals, zines, audio-tapes, CDs, records, DVDS, videos, t-shirts and buttons. In this YouTube clip, co-founder Deborah Edel jokes that “anything that was written by a lesbian, or, we joke, anything that was touched by a lezzie, we want to collect.”

And that is what is really beautiful about the Archives. The women who founded it were not all librarians, and they were not looking to catalogue “famous” lesbians only. They wanted to save the voices from everyone in the lesbian community. They wanted to hear from me and from you. They wanted to hear from everyone so they could speak to all of us.

It all started in 1974 when a group of women who were part of both the Gay Academic Union (GAU) and a consciousness-raising group to discuss sexism within the GAU — and who included Joan Nestle, Julia Stanley, Deb Edel, Sahli Cavallo, and Pamela Oline — realized that they needed to preserve their own personal histories.

I met Deb when I visited the Archives during Brooklyn Pride this year, and we spoke on the phone a few days later. She explained the impetus behind starting the Archives:

“A lot of us were realizing how easily our personal histories and histories of others lesbians were getting lost. Some of us who were trying to do research realized that [the process was insulting]…you either had to look under ‘deviant’ or ‘abnormal.’ There was a recognition of need [for the Archives] because things were disappearing so quickly. We realized that if nobody did anything about it, it would all just disappear…We didn’t quite know what we were getting ourselves into!”

The Archives were initially a small collection housed in Joan’s Upper West Side apartment; 15 years later, it became apparent that the Archives needed a bigger space. The coordinators bought the Park Slope house in 1990 (with money raised from lesbians around the world who believed in and supported the mission) and had an official opening in 1993. Newsletter 16 from December 1996 celebrated the news that the mortgage had been paid off, proudly announcing: “Finally…A Home of Our Own.” The physical space is very important to the Archives as one of its main principles is that “all lesbian women must have access to the Archives; no academic, political, or sexual credentials will be required for use of the collection; race and class must be no barrier for use or inclusion.”

Much of the materials housed at the Archives have been donated directly. “We just sent out the word,” Deb told me. “[We said,] ‘We’re doing this! Send us stuff if you want to. Come visit if you want to.’ And it just grew and grew and grew and grew. Now people come from literally all over the world. We had some visitors from China. It’s very exciting.”

The Archives has always been entirely run by volunteers. Gabrielle Korn, a friend of mine who is an activist, writer, and intern-turned-coordinator at the Archives, spoke with me on the phone during one of her shifts at the Archives about what the place means to her as a younger dyke who wasn’t even born when the Archives first came into existence.

“I started interning here after my sophomore year of college, and it was really my first experience having a lesbian community,” she said. “The place and the experience just became this very integral part of who I was and who I am…my emotional coming of age happened here amidst all this herstory, and learning about all the herstory while forming a community was a really special experience. At the end of the summer I stayed on and became a coordinator. It just kind of gets under your skin once you’re involved.”

Anxious to tell you guys about the fascinating things you can discover at the Archives, I begged both Deb and Gabrielle to tell me what their favorite items were, or what they made a point of showing guests when they led tours. However, both women were hesitant to pick favorites, and shied away from the idea that any item is more interesting than another. “When I give a tour, what I point out and what I don’t very much depends on the interest of the people I’m giving it to,” Deb said, and Gabrielle agreed that it was hard to give a proper tour over the phone. They did each share a few of their favorites, Gabrielle told me how she loves showing Mabel Hampton’s sash from her membership in the Eastern Star and Deb told me about a hard hat with a Lambda on the front, worn by a lesbian who worked in the steel mills, and two Origami figures affectionately called “The Lesbian Nuns,” because that’s what they look like. Both women agreed that I should really spend more time at the Archives myself in order to discover it for myself, and they’re right. It’s impossible for me to tell you what’ll catch your eye, just as it was impossible for Deb and Gabrielle to tell me what I’d find most interesting. The herstory is there for us to explore, and it’s our duty to learn about the lives of the women who shaped our community into what it is today.

“I wish that the Archives played a bigger role in young peoples’ lives,” Gabrielle told me. “I wish that people thought of it as a place to come on a Saturday afternoon, because it is important and it’s special. It’s not just about the things. It’s about having this home.”

The more I learn about the Archives, the more I can’t help comparing it to Autostraddle. The parallels are obvious, though maybe this is a given for any large project taken on by a group of lesbians or queer-identified women. Both projects are entirely volunteer based. Both projects have relied on the community for funding, and this has worked because the community has both seen a need for the project and has respected and admired the projects’ missions. Both projects use words and creativity to bring women together, but both projects also foster community in a physical space (not just on the page and/or screen.) Both projects want to give women a chance to say, “This is who I am because I say so,” as opposed to allowing outside sources tell us who we should be. Both projects offer constant affirmation that you exist, I exist, we exist.

In the very first newsletter from the Archives in June 1975, the founders wrote:

“We undertook the Archives, not as a short-term project, but as a commitment to rediscovering our past, controlling our present, and speaking to our future.”

Now, in 2012, we are the future. I think what we are all doing would make the founders of the Archives proud, but I think it’s equally important that we rediscover our past and keep it in mind as we look toward the new future. Visiting the Lesbian Herstory Archives is a way that we can do that. Donating our own things to the Archives is a way that we can make sure the next generation can do that, too.

When I asked Deb if there was anything I absolutely had to include in this article, her answer was simple. “So many people say, ‘Oh, I’ll come someday.’ If we could just get the word out to those people: Just come! Soak it up. Feel good about all the information that’s here and all the lives that are here and figure out how you can put yourself in the Archives as well. That would be wonderful.”

So…who wants to donate a copy of the Autostraddle zine and an A-Camp t-shirt to the Archives?

The Very Lesbian Life of Miss Anne Lister

June is LGBT Pride Month, so we’re celebrating all of our pride by feeding babies to lions! Just kidding, we’re talking about lesbian history, loosely defined as anything that happened in the 20th century or earlier, ’cause shit changes fast in these parts. We’re calling it The Way We Were, and we think you’re gonna like it. For a full index of all “The Way We Were” posts, click that graphic to the right there.

Previously:

1. Call For Submissions, by The Editors
2. Portraits of Lesbian Writers, 1987-1989, by Riese
3. The Way We Were Spotlight: Vita Sackville-West, by Sawyer
4. The Unaccountable Life of Charlie Brown, by Jemima
5. Read a F*cking Book: “Odd Girls & Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in 20th-Century America”, by Riese
6. Before “The L Word,” There Was Lesbian Pulp Fiction, by Brittani
7. 20 Lesbian Slang Terms You’ve Never Heard Before, by Riese
8. Grrls Grrls Grrls: What I Learned From Riot, by Katrina
9. In 1973, Pamela Learned That Posing in Drag With A Topless Woman Is Forever, by Gabrielle
10. 16 Vintage “Gay” Advertisements That Are Funny Now That “Gay” Means “GAY”, by Tinkerbell
11. Trials and Titillation in Toronto: A Virtual Tour of the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives, by Chandra
12. Ann Bannon, Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Autostraddle Interview, by Carolyn
13. 15 Ways To Spot a Lesbian According To Some Very Old Medical Journals, by Tinkerbell
14. The Very Lesbian Life of Miss Anne Lister, by Laura L

Many of you might know of Miss Anne Lister and may have seen the horrible movie on the BBC a few years ago, but the primary source material from her journals is some of the most hilarious gay romantic angst I have every read. Anne Lister, also known as ‘Gentleman Jack’, was an out lesbian aristocrat in Yorkshire in the early 1800s. She owned land, was an active and respected member of the business community and eventually got “married” to a woman–she was even able to pass on her sizeable estate to her wife when she died. Her diaries reveal that she had a whole slew of lesbian affairs, delighted in seducing young women and showing off her exploits, all whilst remaining an active member of society.

In 1988 historian Helena Whitbread shocked the academic world by publishing the first volume of The Diaries of Miss Anne Lister. These diaries revealed a frank and graphic depiction of active, open lesbian life in the early 1800s. They were so graphic that they were considered a hoax until a great deal of evidence proved their authenticity. If you have some free time you can view the primary source material for free on the History to Herstory Archive. I give you below a selection of the extremely gay life of Miss Anne Lister, a contemporary of Jane Austen and a precursor to Shane McCutcheon.

12 Excerpts From a Very Gay Life

1. Only Loves the Fairer Sex

Monday 29 January 1821 [Halifax]
Arranging & putting away my last year’s letters. Looked over & burnt several very old ones from indifferent people … Burnt … Mr Montagu’s farewell verses that no trace of any man’s admiration may remain. It is not meet for me. I love, & only love, the fairer sex & thus beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any other love than theirs.

Saturday 12 July 1823 [Halifax]
Could not sleep last night. Dozing, hot & disturbed … a violent longing for a female companion came over me. Never remember feeling it so painfully before … It was absolute pain to me.

2. A Day in the Life

Sunday 14 September 1823 [Scarborough]
M- & I went out at 4 & sauntered on the sands to the Spa & beyond it till near 5. Met the girls coming to say dinner was ready. Sat down to dinner at 5. In the evening, from 6-3/4 to 8, M- & Lou & little Charles Milne & I sauntered along the North sands as far as Scorby Mill. Darkish when we got back. Meaning to go to bed soon, came up to my dressing room at 9.50… Perhaps about 12-1/2 every door & window in the house seemed to rattle, which disturbed us exceedingly. At Ist, we thought someone [was] breaking into the house but the continuance of the noises & the pattering of rain soon ushered in a tremendous thunder storm. Very vivid, fast-succeeding flashes of lightning enlightened the whole room. After some time came 1 or 2 tremendous peals of thunder & the heaviest rain I almost ever heard. In the midst of all this, we drew close together, made love & had one of the most delightfully long, tender kisses we have ever had. Said she, in the midst of it, ‘Oh, don’t leave me yet.’ This renewed & redoubled my feelings & we slept in each other’s arms.

M– is Marianna Belcombe Lawton, the first woman Anne Lister married in a church in 1821. Lawton would later marry Charles Lawton, breaking Anne’s heart and subsequently giving her venereal disease through their continued affair. Anne later marries Anne Walker in 1834, who was with her until her death in 1840.

3. Gaydar in 1824

November 1824
She begins to stand closer to me. I might easily press queer to queer. Our liking each other is now mutually understood and acknowledged.

Queer = Vag

October 1824
I have a question to ask you. ‘Êtes-vous Achilles?’ I laughed & said she made me blush … Brought Miss Mack into my room. Joked with her about her question. Said it was exceedingly well put. She said I was the only one in the house to whom she could have written it, because the only one who would have so soon understood it, that is, who would have understood the allusion to take it that way.

“Etes-vou Achilles?” is an illusion to when Achilles dressed as a girl in the court of Lycomedes in order to escape the oracle that says he is to die in the battle of Troy and is snotty british 1820s slang for “Do you read Autostraddle?”.

4. Pubic Hair Lockets

Marianna put me on a new watch riband & then cut the hair from her own queer & I that from mine, which she put each into each of the little lockets we got at Bright’s this morning, twelve shillings each, for us always to wear under our clothes in mutual remembrance. We both of us kissed each bit of hair before it was put into the locket.

Every girl needs a pubic hair locket!

5. Searched for Understanding

Friday, 29th November [halifax]
A long prose just before getting into bed. Talked of the abuse I had for romance, enthusiasm, flattery, manners like those of a gentleman, being too particularly attentive to the ladies, etc. That in consequence I had resolved to change & had succeeded in becoming much more cool & cautious in my general intercourse with people & much less lavish of cordiality & civility … I asked her if, after all of this [their lovemaking], she would own being in love with me. She said no, she did not like the term but clasped me in [her] arms. We kissed & fell asleep.

Said how it was all nature. Had it not been genuine the thing would have been different. I said I had thought much, studied anatomy, etc. Could not find it out. Could not understand myself. It was all the effect of the mind. No exterior formation accounted for it. Alluded to there being an internal correspondence or likeness of some of the male or female organs of generation. Alluded to the stones not slipping thro’ the ring till after birth, etc.’

Anne was very involved in the historical and scientific community and wrote much about possible scientific explanations for being gay.

6. Ex-lover Drama

Friday, 11 July [Halifax]
As I was getting into bed I began thinking how little confidence I had in M– & how little likely it was that we should ever get together. I was very low. I felt that my happiness depended on having some female companion whom I could love & depend upon & my thoughts naturally turned to Isabella. I got out her picture & looked at it for 10 minutes with considerable emotion. I almost wished to persuade myself I could manage her temper as to be happy with her.

Isabella is also called Tib in the diaries, she was a failed relationship Anne had after Marianna married.

7. Doesn’t Like a Tease

Saturday 9 November [Halifax]
Talking to Anne almost all the morning telling [her] she should either be on or off, that she was acting very unfairly & ought either to make up her mind to let me have a kiss at once or change her manners altogether. I said she excited my feelings in a way that was very unjustifiable unless she meant to gratify them & that, really, that sort of thing made me far from well, as I was then very sick, languid & uncomfortable — not able to relish anything.

…

Monday 11 November [Halifax]
Had a very good kiss last night. Anne [Walker] gave it me with pleasure, not thinking it necessary to refuse me any longer.

Kiss = Orgasm. Anne often listed the number and quality of the orgasms of herself and her partners–very Bridget Jones.

8. Got an STI

Saturday 14 December [Langton]
I had a very good kiss last night. Tib had not a very good one … I have been perpetually in horrors for fear of infecting Tib. I wonder whether the discharge is at all venereal or not?

Consulted the doctor about my complaint & the consequent discharge. Said I had caught it from a married friend whose husband was a dissipated character.

Monday 25 November [Langton]
Better kiss last night than Tib has given me for long. Uncomfortable in dressing with Tib in bed. She taxed me with using a squirt, as she called it. I denied, but won’t use the syringe again, however gently I might be.

Always practice safe sex when sleeping with a variety of people! I have never been so happy to live in the 21st century as when I found out what the syringe was they are referring to.

9. Has Bad Sex

Tried for a kiss a considerable time last night but Isabella was as dry as a stick & I could not succeed. At least she had not one & I felt very little indeed. She was very feverish, quite dry heat & seemed quite annoyed & fidgeted…

Friday 26 October [York]
A kiss of Tib, both last night & this morning … but she cannot give me much pleasure & I think we both equally calm in our feelings on these occasions … For my own part, my heart is M–‘s & I can only feel real pleasure with her.

10. Mixed Feelings About Dildos

Got on the subject of Saffic regard. I said there was artifice in it. It was very different from mine & would be no pleasure to me. I liked to have those I loved near me as possible, etc. Asked if she understood. She said no. I told her I knew by her eyes she did & she did not deny it, therefore I know she understands all about the use of a [dildo] … I mentioned the girl at a school in Dublin that had been obliged to have surgical aid to extract the thing.

Fancying I had a penis & was intriguing with her in the downstairs water-closet at Langton before breakfast, to which she would have made no objection.

Anne wrote about preferring the “natural feel of a woman,” but these sections reveal fascinating information about other lesbians using sex toys in the time period.

11. Didn’t Conform to Gender Constraints

This is womanizing me too much … she lets me see too much that she considers me too much as a woman. She talks to me about being unwell [i.e. having menstruation]. I have aired napkins before her. She feels me, etc. All which I like not. Marianna never seems to know or notice these things. She suits me better.’

Talked of the management my temper required. Marianna knew it well. It had its peculiarities but she did not fear. Talked of . . . my sensitiveness of anything that reminded me of my petticoats.

Anne Lister is famous for wearing all black men’s clothing and being called Gentleman Jack in Halifax and Fred by Marianna. There are also multiple entries about Anne’s dislike of women’s clothing and about how she preferred not to be touched during sex. She was very similar to the 1950’s Stone Butch, but without more information I hesitate to place any gender identity or trans* status on her. I will simply state that she did not conform to traditional gender norms.

12. Married a Lady

For if we once got together the world might say what it pleased. She should never mind … She shrank from having the thing surmised now, but declared that if we were once fairly together, she should not care about it. I might tell our connection to all the world if I pleased.

In 1821 and 1834 Anne Lister was married to a woman in a church attended by family. At the same time Jane Austen was writing about women not being able to inherit and needing to marry men quickly Anne was able to inherit her land, run her own business and leave her estate to her second wife Anne Walker. If you are interested in reading an economic analysis of why this is or if you simply are interested in more information about Anne Lister check out the list below!

Read More:

Anne Lister, The First Modern Lesbian by Rictor Norton
The Friend by Alan Bray
Lesbian Lives: Identity and Autobiography in the Twentieth Century by Nicky Hallett

15 Ways To Spot A Lesbian According To Some Really Old Medical Journals

Dell Richards’ book “Lesbian Lists,” published in 1990, contains “a look at lesbian culture, history, and personalities,” through various lists like “19 Lesbian Novelists” and “14 Cult Films With Lesbian Characters.” These lists are both entertaining and educational.

One of the lists is entitled “20 Turn-of-the-Century “Ways to Tell” if a Girl Would Become Gay or if a Woman Was a Lesbian — according to the Medical Journals of the Day.” The list offers an opportunity for us to look back on the silly assholes of Medical History who sought to quell the viral nature of young madiens’ ripe homosexuality by educating the public regarding how to spot lesbians and subsequently convert or destroy them. You never know when a lesbian is in your neighborhood, driving their car down your street, or shopping next to you at the grocery store.

We have selected 15 of the items from this list to share with you today and have illustrated these items with helpful photographs. As you can see, they were clearly completely right about everything and In parentheses you will find the year in which the cited medical journal was printed.

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15 Turn-of-the-Century “Ways to Tell” if a Girl Would Become Gay or if a Woman Was a Lesbian — According to the Medical Journals of the Day

(via Lesbian Lists: a look at lesbian culture, history, and personalities by Dell Richards, 1990)

1. Smokes cigarettes in public. (1890)

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2. Has a capacity for athletics and an incapacity for needlework and other domestic occupations. (1890)

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3. “Tomboy Habits” (1895)

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4. Dresses in Boys’ Clothing (1895)

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5. Abandons Dolls and Girlfriends for Marbles and Masculine Games (1895)

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6. Prefers the Laboratory to the Nursery (1900)

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7. Goes to Bars (1900)

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8. Is Anti-Social (1900)

9. Has a firmness to her walk, a long step, and a rather heavy timbre to her voice. (1900)

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10. Talks loud and uses slang. (1900)

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11. Has no breasts to speak of (1900)

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12. Is square-shouldered and solid (1900)

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13. Has a strong, self-assured look in her eye (1910)

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14. Shows mental arrogance and is abnormally deficient in natural female shyness (1910)

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15. Has intellectual attributes usually associated with men – an acuteness of comprehension and lucid objectivity (1910)

In conclusion, it would seem that the doctors of the 19th century were 100% correct when they made these scientific determinations. I wish you all luck in identifying and executing lesbians in your neighborhood as you see fit.

Ann Bannon, Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Autostraddle Interview

June is LGBT Pride Month, so we’re celebrating all of our pride by feeding babies to lions! Just kidding, we’re talking about lesbian history, loosely defined as anything that happened in the 20th century or earlier, ’cause shit changes fast in these parts. We’re calling it The Way We Were, and we think you’re gonna like it. For a full index of all “The Way We Were” posts, click that graphic to the right there.

Previously:

1. Call For Submissions, by The Editors
2. Portraits of Lesbian Writers, 1987-1989, by Riese
3. The Way We Were Spotlight: Vita Sackville-West, by Sawyer
4. The Unaccountable Life of Charlie Brown, by Jemima
5. Read a F*cking Book: “Odd Girls & Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in 20th-Century America”, by Riese
6. Before “The L Word,” There Was Lesbian Pulp Fiction, by Brittani
7. 20 Lesbian Slang Terms You’ve Never Heard Before, by Riese
8. Grrls Grrls Grrls: What I Learned From Riot, by Katrina
9. In 1973, Pamela Learned That Posing in Drag With A Topless Woman Is Forever, by Gabrielle
10. Trials and Titillation in Toronto: A Virtual Tour of the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives, by Chandra
11. Ann Bannon, Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Autostraddle Interview, by Carolyn

Lesbian pulp fiction was at its peak in the 1950s and 60s, and author Ann Bannon is one of the reasons.

At a time when gender binaries were rigid and queer representations difficult to find, lesbian pulp fiction revealed the possibility of a less mainstream life (read Brittani’s discussion for more details). The books — called pulp because of the low quality of the paper they were printed on — were mailed out like magazines and available in corner stores and bus stops, and to avoid being classified as pornography, many early books had suddenly tragic endings tacked on in the last paragraphs. Though not filled with unicorns and rainbows, Bannon escaped such a fate. Her books — Odd Girl Out, I am a Woman, Women in the Shadows, Journey to a Woman, and Beebo Brinker — are still in print and have earned critical recognition and a place on modern bookshelves.

I spoke to Ann Bannon about lesbian pulp fiction, writing, and being unconventional in the 50s and 60s.*

What distinguishes lesbian pulp fiction from other types of pulp fiction, besides the lesbians?

I guess that would have to be it. I think we were writing in the same era and with the same assumptions that the people who were writing westerns and detective stories and science fiction and romance were writing. There were certain conventions — they weren’t laid down as rules, but you knew that this was supposed to be ephemeral literature. […]

There were a lot of men who were writing those books, and they would write them mainly for a male audience and mainly as an excuse for sex between women, which has always been fascinating to men. But when the women writers — and there weren’t very many of us, fifteen or twenty were active during that period — when we wrote the books, it was of far more interest to us to explore the characters themselves, the feelings and the emotions and the interconnectedness and the struggle to communicate without offending. There were a lot of things that had to go into those stories to retain the realism of the time, and the difficulty, but at the same time to communicate the humour and the joy of finding someone. All of that I think played a much bigger role than just simply plotting. If you were writing westerns, it was going to be in all likelihood an adventure story and there would be the ranchers against the farmers, or it would be the cowboys and the Indians; if it was a science fiction story it was all about inventing an intricate different world with a different culture and different rules and exploring space; in the police novels it was about plotting and making things happen in quick succession. In the lesbian pulps, it was adventurous in its own way but it was more about the characters and personality and people being able to find each other in such a hostile environment. And that was a critical component.

Who were they meant to appeal to?

Women who were writing wrote them for women. But the authors generally — if you threw in the great many men who tried to make money in this genre, there is no question that we had an enormous crossover audience of men. […] It was inevitable I think that men would express interest and find those books and read them, and for all the complaining about that, it’s probably what make the lesbian pulp genre a viable one. It gave a financial security that wouldn’t otherwise have been attainable if the books had been pitched exclusively to women. That doesn’t excuse the excesses of the male writers, and the total lack of sensitivity in their approach, but it does explain the financial success and the reason why editors and publishers promoted the books the way they did. Word got out to an enormous nation-wide audience that became an international audience. It put them on the shelves in the bookstores and the newsstands and the bus stops, right alongside all the other genres, and allowed us to find a much larger audience and to make a success of the books. Lesbian pulps might have died if that hadn’t been the case. But you do have to distinguish between the approach the male writers took and the approach the women themselves took.

When they came out, how much did they sell for?

Some were sold for 25 cents but I think my first one was 35 cents […] It sounds like a very small amount of money, and it was, even for those times, though you could buy a lot more with 50 cents then, but it got them out to a mass audience, and that was live or die for the paperbacks. […] [Publishers] paid you upfront, a flat fee, whether the book sold well or not. It was something like $2,500, which was a lot of money back then. And then royalties were 15 per cent […] but you sold millions of them. You actually could make a living writing paperback novels.

You’ve been called “The Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction.” How did you get your start?

I was a newlywed and I was living in Philadelphia while my husband was working, and I sat down at the dining room table and started writing the story that became Odd Girl Out. It was a rather long manuscript and little bit clumsy but there were some good things in it. I had begun a correspondence with the first really successful lesbian pulp writer — her pen name was Vin Packer and her real name was Marijane Meaker. (Marijane is still living and still writing.) And I wrote to her because she was the only one I could find who was doing this kind of work. It turned out she was living in New York, and was working on a lot of other books at the time, still really successful, and she said, “Well, if you can get up to New York, I will invite you to meet my editor, and you can bring your manuscript and we’ll see if he likes it.”

I was just extremely lucky that she took an interest and I bamboozled my husband to let me go up to New York by myself and I met Marijane Meaker and we hit it off very well, and she took me over to the Gold Medal Books offices and introduced me to the editor in chief there, who was her publisher. We had a good talk. And in fact within two days he had read the book, and he sent me home with instructions. He said, “It’s gotta be half the length it is, and you need to tell the story of the two young women.” And this was hard for me to hear because I thought I tucked the two young women away in a corner where they wouldn’t be noticed, and he said, “No, that’s your story.” I went back to Philadelphia on the train with my manuscript, I sat down, and I began to trim. It was rather hard for me to do, to bring the two girls to the fore. I had a hard time thinking of how I was going to tell my mother about this. I was really a little tentative about the whole thing, but on the other hand I wanted to get published, and my heart really was in those stories, so I did it. I shortened the manuscript, I told the story of Beth and Laura […] and so I took it back, and the editor, whose name was Dick Carroll, read it, and by the time I got home there was a note in the mail saying, “We’re going to publish it.” And they didn’t change a word. It was kind of an amazing piece of luck that I had established a correspondence with Marijane Meaker; that she and I kind of enjoyed the correspondence, and that she was willing to give me that entry.

Are any elements of the books autobiographical?

“I think a lot more young women today are a lot more self-confident about stepping out into the world on their own. They expect to work, expect to find a place in the world outside the domestic sphere. And in the 1940s and 50s and 60s, it was not that way. You were expected to conform. And a great many of us did.”

Well, yes. The first book is set in a college sorority, and when you’re very young, you write about what you know. I had just come out of that life within the year prior to writing the book, and so it’s not that I was Beth or I was Laura, but I think there were a lot of elements of both of those characters in me and in the life I was living then, and I also had the opportunity to observe, of course, as all writers do. You’re participating in life, but you’re sort of taking mental notes all the time simultaneously. I suppose in ways I would be more like Beth, because she was the one who held back, she was the one who when the crises came chose to marry a young man and live a more conventional life, at least initially. And so while I would have loved to have done what Laura did, to go to New York and try to find myself, I did the more conventional thing, and I think I was not alone in that. There were a great many of my age-mates who, under the pressure of conventional thinking at the time, knuckled-under to that. For a lot of young women in your teens and your twenties, the pressures from your family and your friends and your colleagues all around were so heavy on you to get married and have children that a lot of us found that hard to resist. It seemed as if that was all we could do and that everything would turn out OK. Society was sending the message that even if you have doubts, the doubts would all be resolved if you followed this mainstream path which sort of laid out a blue print for you, and if you’re rebellious about this, your life will fall apart, you’ll have a lot of trouble, you’ll never settle down — you just got that from all sides. From the medical establishment to college professors to religious leaders of the time to the federal government, everyone was telling you, “Live a normal life and everything will turn out OK.” So a lot of us did. And I can’t regret some aspects of it — I am certainly delighted to have my two lovely daughters and my grandchildren, so there were some rewards, but I don’t think today I would have done that. I think a lot more young women today are a lot more self-confident about stepping out into the world on their own. They expect to work, expect to find a place in the world outside the domestic sphere. And in the 1940s and 50s and 60s, it was not that way. You were expected to conform. And a great many of us did.

Do you have a favourite pulp fiction novel?

I still have some affection for Marijane Meaker’s book Spring Fire; that was the first of the lesbian pulp novels and she really does get credit for that, although that book had a very bad ending. It was published in 1952, and she was required by the publisher at the time to end the book in such a way that it would not suggest happiness as a possibility. In other words, you couldn’t have a lesbian story in which the two women end up happy in one another’s arms. So to her great distress and embarrassment, she wrote a love story, and practically on the last page, one of the girls goes crazy and the other one says, “Well, I wasn’t serious.” It was very strange. But the reason was the books were distributed just like magazines by the US post office. They weren’t shipped in trucks from warehouses by publishers, they were distributed like newspapers and magazines. And the US post office said, “We will not deliver your books to your markets if they have happy endings,” and the reason they wouldn’t do it was that Congress had passed various laws that restricted the dissemination of what they thought was pornography. Their concern was that in reading about happy gay and lesbian lives, children would be persuaded to become gay or lesbian. So you had to show them that if you had those feelings, they had to be smothered, otherwise your life would be a tragedy and you could never be happy or normal or stable. So the restrictions were very severe. Five years later, when Odd Girl Out was published, things had begun to loosed just a little bit and I did not have to do that. I did send Beth into the arms of Charlie, but normally I would have had to throw Laura under the train. Instead, I put her on the train and sent her from the college town to New York city to make a new start in life, and somehow we got away with it, and the book sold very well.

It’s very hard to pick a favourite novel. There was Price of Salt, by Patricia Highsmith, published as Claire Morgan, and Patience and Sarah, Valerie Taylor was writing, and Paula Christian. Many intelligent and thoughtful women were doing good work, but I guess since it was the book that suddenly crystallized for me what I would like to write, I would have to pick Spring Fire.

Do you have any plans to write anything else?

I have started a memoir, because people have been interested in how I lived my life, but I don’t think I would do another novel. I actually did write one in the late 80s and early 90s and I don’t think it was what I would have liked it to be, so I’m very dubious about doing that again. I think the time for that came and went. There was a tremendous swell of interest in lesbian pulps, and their era was really the 50s and 60s, and then there began to be other outlets. The feminist movement came up and electrified everybody. People continued to write but it was in a different vein. Bit by bit, television and film began to do a lot more adventurous work. The role that lesbian pulps had played in educating women and serving as sort of travel guides and providing insight into life as it could be lived as a lesbian — that role was diminished and taken over by theatre and film and popular magazines that really replaced the need for the lesbian pulps. I don’t think I would try to write another book in that vein, it wouldn’t be appropriate, but if I ever get back to my desk, I might get the memoir finished. […] It’s a little difficult with six grandchildren and other people in my life who would have a hard time dealing with this, so I’m not sure if it will ever come to pass.

*This interview actually happened October 14, 2010, but has not been published until now.

Trials and Titillation in Toronto: A Virtual Tour of the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives

June is LGBT Pride Month, so we’re celebrating all of our pride by feeding babies to lions! Just kidding, we’re talking about lesbian history, loosely defined as anything that happened in the 20th century or earlier, ’cause shit changes fast in these parts. We’re calling it The Way We Were, and we think you’re gonna like it. For a full index of all “The Way We Were” posts, click that graphic to the right there.

Previously:

1. Call For Submissions, by The Editors
2. Portraits of Lesbian Writers, 1987-1989, by Riese
3. The Way We Were Spotlight: Vita Sackville-West, by Sawyer
4. The Unaccountable Life of Charlie Brown, by Jemima
5. Read a F*cking Book: “Odd Girls & Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in 20th-Century America”, by Riese
6. Before “The L Word,” There Was Lesbian Pulp Fiction, by Brittani
7. 20 Lesbian Slang Terms You’ve Never Heard Before, by Riese
8. Grrls Grrls Grrls: What I Learned From Riot, by Katrina
9. In 1973, Pamela Learned That Posing in Drag With A Topless Woman Is Forever, by Gabrielle
10. Trials and Titillation in Toronto: A Virtual Tour of the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives, by Chandra

If you were ever a high school student, which you probably were, and if you were in Canada at the time, which most of you probably weren’t, you likely suffered through tedious history lessons about pugnacious Prime Ministers, endless language debates, and the significance of the Battle of Beaver Dams (an actual battle that I didn’t just make up).

Wouldn’t it have been great if, along with Laura Secord and the FLQ, you had learned about the Brunswick Four, a group of lesbians kicked out of a pub for subversive a cappella? Or if one of the many textbook chapters on battles and armies included the story of Private Barbara Thornborrow, who stood up to the Canadian Armed Forces when they tried to dismiss her for being gay?

Happily, in the rainbow-tinted future we are surely headed for, where queer history is included in high school curriculum as a matter of routine, textbook editors will have somewhere to turn for their chapter content: The Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives. I bet you didn’t even know we had one of those! Well, we do, and here are some things I learned that I thought you might like to learn too.

Basement Boxes and Political Bodies

The CLGA opened to public fanfare in 1973 in a ceremony hosted by the Queen! Just kidding. It started out as a bunch of boxes in somebody’s basement in Toronto. That somebody was a member of a small but driven collective who, two years prior, had started publishing The Body Politic, which would turn out to be one of Canada’s most influential queer magazines. Originally intended as a way to keep track of the vast oceans of paper that come with a self-publishing operation, the CLGA soon outgrew its basement corner and became the second-largest LGBT archives in the world.

The Body Politic ran for 15 years, which is approximately eleventy hundred in grassroots-underground-magazine years, and during this time managed to subvert a lot of cultural expectations and piss off a lot of authority figures without getting shut down. The magazine contained the expected variety of political musings, calls to action, racy photos, artwork, poetry, and lots and lots of articles about sex (including a guide to fisting etiquette that led to indecency charges in 1982). Little content seems to be available online, but you can peruse the CLGA’s records to your heart’s content here.

The magazine was discontinued in 1987 to make way for its successor, Xtra!, still published across Canada today. As with most queer publications of its time (and arguably today), TBP seems to have been mainly run by, written for, and read by gay men, but there were significant contributions by queer women as well, most notably Jane Rule.

Jane Rule boys drool!

Jane Rule, who by name alone was obviously a lesbian superhero, had published Desert of the Heart in 1964 – a love story that resonated with closeted women across the country, made headlines, and earned her the title of The Only Lesbian in Canada. (I guess it makes sense that we can only have one lesbian, since we only have one road, and this helps to keep U-Haul traffic jams to a minimum.)

She wrote a regular column for TBP and had so many interesting things to say about so many topics that I had trouble deciding where to start. Unafraid of taboo or controversy, she wrote about the “gentler eroticism” of elderly people, decried the “possessiveness and deprivation” of sexual fidelity, and blamed gay oppression on the uptight sexuality of straight people.

Equally outspoken off the page, she was so opposed to the institution of marriage that she refused survivor benefits and urged people to lie on the Canadian census. Even if you don’t entirely agree with her reasoning, which I don’t, you have to admire her general badassness.

Jane Rule wasn’t, of course, the actual Only Lesbian in Canada. She was just the only one with a name and a face in mainstream media. For an out lesbian in the sixties and seventies, her superpower was visibility, where invisibility was the norm. She wore a rainbow cape of pride and leapt over bigots in a single bound! Am I carrying this metaphor too far? Okay, moving on.

Deck the Halls with Gays and Lesbos

In the rainbow-tinted fantasy future previously mentioned, the halls of government buildings will be adorned, alongside stuffy portraits of national dignitaries, with fabulous depictions of LGBT activists and pioneers. Luckily, again, the work of future government-building-interior-decorators will be simplified thanks to the CLGA’s National Portrait Collection, an exhibit of works by LGBT artists celebrating people who have made important contributions to queer communities in Canada. And luckily for us, the whole collection is available for our optical pleasure online.

Jim Egan, Canada’s First Gay Activist

Janine Fuller, Writer and Activist

Makeda Silvera, Writer and Activist

In addition to this gallery, the CLGA has a few other digital collections, but in order to jump into the actual oceans of paper themselves, you have to visit the Archives in person at 34 Isabella Street, Toronto. Forget the CN Tower; who wants to spend their afternoon stuffed inside a concrete phallus with a bunch of tourists? Go learn yourself some queer history instead!

16 Vintage “Gay” Advertisements That Are Funny Now That “Gay” Means “GAY”

“Gay” is a great word. Here’s why: it rhymes with everything. Also, it’s brief. Therefore it should be no surprise that even before it meant “inverted sinner pervert homosexual” and still meant “happy.” What happened next was that gayness and happiness split up, but they’ve been getting back together ever since and are going strong. Look at our ancestors in gayness!

16 Vintage “Gay” Ads That Weren’t Actually About Gay People But Should Be Now

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In 1973, Pamela Learned That Posing in Drag With A Topless Woman Is Forever

June is LGBT Pride Month, so we’re celebrating all of our pride by feeding babies to lions! Just kidding, we’re talking about lesbian history, loosely defined as anything that happened in the 20th century or earlier, ’cause shit changes fast in these parts. We’re calling it The Way We Were, and we think you’re gonna like it. For a full index of all “The Way We Were” posts, click that graphic to the right there.

Previously:

1. Call For Submissions, by The Editors
2. Portraits of Lesbian Writers, 1987-1989, by Riese
3. The Way We Were Spotlight: Vita Sackville-West, by Sawyer
4. The Unaccountable Life of Charlie Brown, by Jemima
5. Read a F*cking Book: “Odd Girls & Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in 20th-Century America”, by Riese
6. Before “The L Word,” There Was Lesbian Pulp Fiction, by Brittani
7. 20 Lesbian Slang Terms You’ve Never Heard Before, by Riese
8. Grrls Grrls Grrls: What I Learned From Riot, by Katrina
9. In 1973, Pamela Learned That Posing in Drag With a Topless Woman Is Forever, by Gabrielle

It was March 8, 1973, a memorable day for Pamela: she had just quit smoking for the first time. (She would quit again and again until her actual last cigarette on June 3, 1990). The other events of that day did not, at the time, seem particularly noteworthy.

Pamela was living in New York City, on Christopher Street right at Sheridan Square. She was a proudly out lesbian in a time and at a place where gay visibility was on the rise: four years after the Stonewall Riots, coming out had become a political strategy of the movement. There was an infectious queer fierceness in the air. ‘Homosexuality’ had just been removed from the DSM as a pathological disorder.

Pamela had been earning extra money for several years giving alternative lifestyle haircuts to dykes around town, a pastime that remains a special talent of many lesbians to this day. Pamela had created a barber drag persona for herself by drawing on a mustache and carrying haircutting tools in a Dykes Lumber apron.

On March 8, Pamela was giving a haircut in her friend Trixie’s loft at 810 Broadway, a building in Greenwich Village that’s now super fancy. She was cutting the hair of a lesbian named Ayn (pronounced Ian), who was Trixie’s girlfriend Peggy’s friend, in town from Boston.

Oftentimes, Pamela’s clients would take their shirts off during their haircuts (for clean up purposes, duh). And sometimes, Pamela could get them to pose for her. So, as was customary, Ayn had taken her shirt off for the haircut. But rather than Pamela taking a photo of the haircut afterwards, Trixie snapped a picture of Pamela and Ayn together — Ayn, still topless, and Pamela, still in barber drag. It didn’t seem like a big deal. Just a bunch of lesbians, cutting hair, taking shirts off, taking pictures. The usual.

Nowadays, hopefully we all know that if you’re going to be in a picture with naked boobs you should probably a) keep track of it and/or b) not put it on the internet, unless you just aren’t trying to get a day job where they look into things like that – in that case, you do you!

Before the internet, information was disseminated using “printing presses.” Unbeknownst to Pamela, Trixie gave the photo to an underground community printing press run by a lesbian named Mercury Volt, who Pamela very specifically recalls as being a Gemini. (Mercury Volt also printed the questionnaires for the first Hite Report, a very famous study on female sexuality, which was at the time an underground endeavor due to a lack of funding.)

Three and a half months later, it was Gay Pride Week – one of the first of its kind. Pamela’s father came to the Village to take her out to dinner. They were close; she had come out to him at 17. After dinner they went for a walk around the gayborhood. That’s when Pamela saw it: plastered literally all over the place, on every wall and phone booth, was her own face staring back at her.

The photo of Ayn and Pamela taken by Trixie on March 8 had been blown up into a Gay Pride Week ‘73 poster that was captioned, “I’LL ALWAYS LOVE MY MAMA.” It’s unclear where that caption came from – you never know with Geminis.

Maybe it was because of the barber drag, or maybe it’s because parents see us as they want to – either way, Pamela’s dad didn’t notice his daughter in the posters. He also somehow didn’t notice Pamela’s total panic as they passed phone booth after phone booth covered with her mustached face and Ayn’s breasts. And that caption! Pamela had called other women “sister” from time to time, but she had never, ever called another woman Mama. She found the words humiliating, and was upset that Trixie hadn’t asked her permission.

But aside from the caption and the initial shock, Pamela didn’t really mind so much. To be featured in an advertisement for Gay Pride that celebrates lesbian life using this unrehearsed, un-self-consciously organic portrayal of dykes is actually pretty cool.

More than twenty years later, in the late 1990s, Pamela was at a party that filmmaker Joyce Warshow held for her friend, Blue Lunden. Blue was a working class butch dyke, and the muse for Joyce’s most well-known film, a documentary called Some Ground to Stand On. Joyce had been inspired to make the film in part because of the serious lack of documentation of working class butch experiences. Pamela had done a bit of post-production work on the film and so had seen it several times. She was fond of Blue from afar.

Pamela and Blue hadn’t met before Joyce’s party, where Blue immediately recognized Pamela’s face from the Gay Pride ’73 poster that had been hanging on her wall for the past 20 years. Pamela was flattered, and found it incredible that Blue had identified her after all those years and without the mustache on – even when her own father hadn’t.

And perhaps that speaks to the special secret language of lesbian visibility that has connected us to one another throughout time. Our ability to be known to each other but not to others is what created community in times when no one was yet dreaming of mainstream rights like marriage equality. But this was a time when the importance of being seen, not just to one another but to the rest of the world, had leapt to the forefront of the movement. And it was a radical visibility proclaiming that pride can and should be derived from the basic realities of queer lives – like some dykes getting together to cut hair. The rest of the world, like Pamela’s father, had only just started to take notice.

Note: The poster found its way to the Lesbian Herstory Archives, and I came across it while archiving the graphics collection in August of 2009. I left it out on the conference table, and it was noticed by another coordinator who immediately recognized Pamela as her first roommate when she moved to New York City. Parts of this story are based on their subsequent email correspondence, with permission.

Grrrls! Grrrls! Grrrls!: What I Learned From Riot

June is LGBT Pride Month, so we’re celebrating all of our pride by feeding babies to lions! Just kidding, we’re talking about lesbian history, loosely defined as anything that happened in the 20th century or earlier, ’cause shit changes fast in these parts. We’re calling it The Way We Were, and we think you’re gonna like it. For a full index of all “The Way We Were” posts, click that graphic to the right there.

1. Call For Submissions, by The Editors
2. Portraits of Lesbian Writers, 1987-1989, by Riese
3. The Way We Were Spotlight: Vita Sackville-West, by Sawyer
4. The Unaccountable Life of Charlie Brown, by Jemima
5. Read a F*cking Book: “Odd Girls & Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in 20th-Century America”, by Riese
6. Before “The L Word,” There Was Lesbian Pulp Fiction, by Brittani
7. 20 Lesbian Slang Terms You’ve Never Heard Before, by Riese
8. Grrls Grrls Grrls: What I Learned From Riot, by Katrina

I wasn’t there when it happened. Not by choice, just by circumstance.

In 1991, when the riot grrrl scene was growing in the Pacific Northwest and Washington, DC, I was one year old. I was taking my clothes off and screaming and breaking things, but that was probably just a coincidence. And even though I wouldn’t learn what riot meant for another 16 years, what was happening then would inevitably shape the feminist consciousness that I would grow to inherit.

My generation is the one that knows Kathleen Hanna from Le Tigre. Our friends who don’t run in feminist circles know Carrie Brownstein from Portlandia. And for those of us who do know who Brownstein was in relation to the movement, the only way we could have ever seen her gloriously kick and cartwheel across a stage was not with Sleater-Kinney, but with riot supergroup Wild Flag.

These are the heirlooms of riot. They’re what our foresisters left for us to make sure we would never forget.

We may not have experienced it firsthand, but there is a story that is told to us as young feminists, artists, organizers and – yes – rebel girls. It’s like a punk rock bedtime story to know by heart, sort of like a tweaked-out lullaby set to the tune of a thousand wailing guitars.

Here’s how I understand it:

It wasn’t that riot grrrl was born out of punk. It was more like riot set punk on fire and rose screaming out of its ashes. Riot wasn’t about punk like feminism isn’t about men. It didn’t happen because we hated men, it happened because we loved ourselves and knew the kind of world we deserved. What riot wanted couldn’t be contained. And that was the point, wasn’t it? That women and grrrls didn’t have to accept a world built by men. Women didn’t have to adhere to men’s standards of beauty or power or worth. We didn’t have to have conversations using their vocabulary.

In 2010, Sara Marcus published Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution, a thoroughly-researched analytical memoir of the riot movement. Marcus explains the grrrls’ outrage:

“The girls were furious about things like parental-consent abortion laws, bikini-clad women who hawked beer and cigarettes on billboards and TV, and the archaic gender roles that pervaded the cartoon section of the Washington Post. They were ready to revolt over things like hallway gropes and sidewalk heckles, leering teachers, homophobic threats, rape, incest, domestic violence, sexual double standards, ubiquitous warnings against walking certain places or dressing certain ways … The affronts were neverending. The girls couldn’t block these things out and they didn’t want to; they wanted to stay acutely aware of the war against them so they could fight back.”

The grrrls were coming to realize the extent to which violence pervaded culture. They knew that violence wasn’t necessarily rape or abuse (though it certainly was that, too); it was also something much more quiet and insidious than that. Violence was a systematic force that worked within our society to tell us, as Kathleen Hanna put it in her Riot Grrrl Manifesto, that “Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak.”

Marcus’s book received overwhelmingly positive reviews from both mainstream media as well as the women who were involved in the founding of riot. This was a particularly huge accomplishment, as riot was decidedly averse to mainstream media, making it practically a policy to refuse interviews for fear of misrepresentation. But this policy came at a price, because there’s something that happens when you don’t let the mainstream media represent (or misrepresent) you: people either make their own judgments based off stereotypes and hearsay, or they forget you exist. Facing the issue of erasure, the riot grrrls created their own narrative, writing their history through art, music, documentaries and zines that honored the work they were doing using their own words and their own voices.

Riot was a way for women to politicize themselves while remaining creative and badass. Creation in itself was a form of resistance and a validation of their existence. They weren’t asking for permission or respect. They didn’t need to ask. That was also the point: not needing anyone’s fucking permission.

When we live our lives bending to patriarchy – intentionally or not – we do this thing where we sit around waiting for someone to tell us it’s okay. Riot said we didn’t have to. It was a coming-of-age where women who were making music could stand next to each other on a stage without fearing a comparison or a pigeonhole. Standing alongside each other wasn’t a threat, it was an honor, and it was solidarity in an unprecedented manner.

Riot showed us what revolution could look like. We had a new concept of what power could be. We could find it within ourselves and in each other — and we didn’t have to ask. Power lay in our ability to create and in our refusal to be silenced or ashamed or sorry. We could use this to build communities, validate ourselves, have our own voices and see ourselves reflected in the world we wanted to live in, the world we wanted to create.

For grrrls in my generation, riot is literally a history. Two years ago, the papers of Kathleen Hanna were added to the Riot Grrrl archive at the Fales Library at NYU. The university’s newsletter covered the decision, explaining that “the Riot Grrrl Collection will support scholarship in feminism, punk activism, queer theory, music history and more.”

We didn’t see the riot, but we saw the aftermath. We came to the point where we could view it with a critical eye, and we’re coming to understand the ways that race and class play into our activism today. And that’s our responsibility, isn’t it? To hold each other accountable, to respect what came before us, and to keep the legacy strong in the best way that we can.

So without further adieu:

Rebel Girl – Bikini Kill
Crying Shame – 7 Year Bitch
I Like Fucking  – Bikini Kill
Shove – L7
Brat Girl – Bratmobile
Ladybug Superfly –  Slant 6
Vintage Piranha – The Bangs
Uncle Phranc – Team Dresch
Off With Your Head – Sleater-Kinney
Bruise Violet – Babes in Toyland
Terrorist – Heavens to Betsy
Smells Like Teen Spirit (cover) – Kathleen Hanna

Stream the playlist on 8Tracks!

Get it, grrrls.