Historical Dictionary of Lesbian Literature - Scarecrow Press

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Introduction WHAT IS A LESBIAN ANYWAY? Throughout the early 1970s, a debate around lesbian sexuality and lesbian rights was raging within the feminist movement. In the United States, “mainstream” feminist organizations publicly debated the relationship between lesbianism and feminism. In 1970, the American group National Organization for Women (NOW) defeated a resolution for the support of equal rights for lesbian women. Betty Friedan— author of The Feminine Mystique (1963), the book that is said to have inspired the second wave of feminism—was one of the resolution’s chief opponents. By 1971 the NOW convention passed a resolution in support of lesbian and bisexual women. Again in 1973, the debate flared up, and Friedan expressed the fear that “anti-male” lesbians sought to dominate the women’s movement. Finally, in 1977 Friedan supported a lesbian rights resolution at the NOW annual convention. 1 Lesbians would seem to be, by definition, women who love women, and yet many feminists have not appeared to include lesbians in the category, “woman,” which they sought to champion. Behind this argument was a fundamental question. What is the relationship between the category “lesbian” and the category “woman”? Feminism purported to represent “women,” to make the oppression of women visible and to fight for the liberation of women. The most significant criticisms of white, middle-class American feminism have pointed out the blindness that feminist arguments embody regarding race. “All” women often meant all white women, and implicitly all heterosexual, white, middle-class women. Thus the feminist movement galvanized a huge fight for the right to legalized abortion while in the same nation at the same time black and Native American women were being sterilized without their own consent in the thousands. 2 What did xxv
xxvi • INTRODUCTION feminists mean when they used the term “women” to describe the category they represented? What does lesbian mean and how does it relate to the category women? What is the real relationship between the feminist movement and the increasing visibility of lesbians in culture? These questions are relevant here because the development of feminism and the development of the lesbian identity have progressed hand in hand in Western culture. The struggle for sexual autonomy and the struggle for sexual determination are common to lesbians and feminists. More importantly here, the creation of a space in culture (most significantly and enduringly in literature) where women can articulate agency and reject the passive requisite of femininity might be said to be the primary aim of feminism. The gains made by feminism in this respect have directly enabled the visibility of the lesbian identity. Likewise, many of the women most instrumental in pushing for feminist change have loved each other. Mary Wollstonecraft, often thought of as the Enlightenment “mother” of English-language feminism, spent a large part of one of her most significant works (Mary: A Fiction, 1788) describing her romantic attachment to another young woman. Categories of masculine and feminine have traditionally been correlated with active and passive desires, respectively. The feminine position has been described, and often policed, as one of passivity. From at least the late 16th century, one can see a clear tradition in Englishlanguage writing by women, whereby arguments are made for the expression of active desires in women. Lesbianism, by its very nature, implies an active female sexuality. If the “heterosexual contract,” as Monique Wittig has called it, stipulates that the male is the active and the female the passive sexual partner, then at least one member of a lesbian couple has stepped out of her prescribed role, by asserting agency. Therefore both lesbians and feminists challenge the culturally accepted definition of “woman.” Hence popular misconceptions that conflate the two categories. This is also the origin of Monique Wittig’s argument that, if woman is merely a culturally constructed position of passivity, then lesbians are not women. The subject of this dictionary is therefore unstable. We can never quite know what lesbian means. We can know that, since the advent of modernity, it has been a challenge, sometimes a revolutionary challenge, to existing structures of power when women declare their love for one another. This idea of the lesbian arises when culture begins to ask itself questions about the nature of sexual power.
Page 1 and 2: Historical Dictionary of Lesbian Li
Page 3 and 4: Editor’s Foreword Most of the cat
Page 5 and 6: xii • PREFACE literature and prov
Page 7 and 8: Acronyms and Abbreviations BBC Brit
Page 9 and 10: xviii • CHRONOLOGY 1611 Thomas Mi
Page 11 and 12: xx • CHRONOLOGY in the Psychology
Page 13 and 14: xxii • CHRONOLOGY 1942 Ismat Chug
Page 15: xxiv • CHRONOLOGY 1984 Barbara Wi
Page 19 and 20: xxviii • INTRODUCTION in the deve
Page 21 and 22: xxx • INTRODUCTION to women reade
Page 23 and 24: xxxii • INTRODUCTION refer to as
Page 25 and 26: xxxiv • INTRODUCTION The 18th cen
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Page 39 and 40: xlviii • INTRODUCTION larger symb
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Page 43 and 44: lii • INTRODUCTION Dollimore Jona

Historical Dictionary of Lesbian Literature - Scarecrow Press

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