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lesbian feminism

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OutHistory.org - Lesbian Feminism, 1960s and 1970s

lesbian feminism, a subset of feminism that emerged within the mid-to-late twentieth century at the convergence of the women’s movement, the gay rights movement, and the sexual revolution. Lesbian feminists consider similar-sex relationships legitimate and use their lesbian id as a basis for community constructing and collective motion. Lesbian feminism challenges the perception of heterosexuality and male supremacy as "normal" and presents alternative routes of fascinated by gender and power.

Historical background

Before the 1960s, thriving gay and lesbian communities developed across the United States, especially in city areas, the place they typically centred on bars or private homes. During that period, many lesbians assumed feminine ("femme" or "fem") or masculine ("butch") gender roles-and, typically, manners of costume. Many of these communities functioned underground as a technique of protection from pervasive hostility, physical violence, social ostracism, harassment, and lack of employment. Because lesbians were operating inside a tradition that considered homosexuality as a type of mental disorder and a risk to the nicely-being of American society, their social, authorized, and economic considerations-like these of their male counterparts-have been believed better stored personal. Slowly that concept began to be challenged. In 1955 a group of women led by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon formed the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the primary national group for lesbians. Members of DOB organized for social and political purposes, in search of to end the sense of isolation many lesbians felt, to coach gay women about their legal rights, and to extend their social acceptance.

With the rise of feminism’s second wave within the 1960s, the precise concerns of lesbians emerged as a part of a broader problem towards sexism. Lesbians performed a prominent function in lots of new feminist organizations, serving to to arrange for equity in the office, the house, and the courts. Concurrently, the civil rights and gay rights movements and altering attitudes toward sexuality created openings for a extra-seen and defiant assault on sexual oppression. However, many taboos nonetheless surrounded lesbianism within feminist organizations in the 1960s, and male sexism constrained lesbians within the gay rights movement. Betty Friedan, the founding father of the National Organization for Women (NOW), famously referred to as lesbians a "lavender menace." She asserted that they threatened to taint the popularity of the feminist movement, driving girls away out of fear of affiliation and diverting consideration from extra-essential campaigns for women’s equality. Likewise, within mixed-intercourse gay rights organizations, some lesbians found their issues marginalized by male counterparts who were no more committed to ending sexism than was the broader society. Lesbian feminists responded by creating their very own organizations so as to rework shame into pride and to problem the idea that equated lesbianism with deviance.

Theoretical underpinnings

Lesbian feminism offered a method for women to free themselves from both male domination and heterosexism. Its analysis of society was based on two central claims. The first was an assertion that heterosexuality encompassed much more than a form of sexual need, that it also functioned as an institution that supported male supremacy and female subordination. Romantic love, familial buildings, traditional gender roles, and even the U.S. economic construction strengthened heterosexuality, making it obligatory and leaving its putative normalcy unquestioned. At the same time that heterosexuality helped perpetuate the subordination of ladies, it reinforced the benefits that ladies may achieve from participation in partnerships with men, which gave them added standing and financial privileges. The menace of losing these advantages stored ladies from challenging the established order and performing in ways that might jeopardize their standing. As one in all the primary lesbian feminist teams, the Radicalesbians, argued in a 1970 essay, "The Woman-Identified Woman," ladies were called lesbians (pejoratively), regardless of their most well-liked partners, when they dared to act as if they had been equal to men. Fear of being labeled a lesbian acted as a robust deterrent towards women’s push for equality as well as constraining the development of solidarity among ladies.

The second claim of lesbian feminists, given the central significance of heterosexuality and marriage (then confined to male-female relationships) to the maintenance of male supremacy, was that lesbian individuals and relationships presented a profound challenge to the social and economic order. They rejected male privilege and rejected the notions of male superiority and female inferiority. Indeed, lesbian feminists asserted that lesbians exemplified women’s liberation, demonstrating the private, economic, and sexual independence that feminists believed all girls ought to possess. That evaluation helped provide perception into the way in which that society constructed its notion of womanhood, recognizing that lesbians conformed to many traits generally construed as masculine. Moreover, some lesbian feminists asserted the superiority of women’s ways of residing, suggesting that ladies who challenged society’s views of male supremacy might discover extra egalitarian and less superficial methods of relating to one another. Using that rationale, many lesbian feminists criticized butch-and-femme position-taking part in as mere imitation of an oppressive heterosexuality.

Throughout the context of the late 1960s and the 1970s, lesbian feminists translated these ideas right into a mass motion for women’s liberation. That motion primarily organized women at the native stage into small teams, supported by an array of national publications, businesses, and gatherings. A branch of the broader feminist motion, lesbian feminism remained both related to the larger wrestle for women’s liberation and extremely important of it.

Strategically, the lesbian feminist motion emphasised its connection to broader feminist struggles and harassed group constructing among ladies. A lot of those in the movement believed that they constituted a revolutionary vanguard, the forefront of a broader political motion to create a extra egalitarian society. If society taught that ladies have been inferior, then lesbians, or "women-recognized ladies," experienced the greatest oppression, took the biggest dangers, and most clearly demonstrated the depth of their dedication to gender equality. By defining lesbian feminism as centrally essential to feminism, lesbian feminists helped carry larger acceptance throughout the women’s motion to those who recognized as lesbian, and they fostered an atmosphere that made it doable for a lot of women to call their wishes and discover consistency between their private lives and their political ideals. At the same time, lesbian feminists have been criticized for promoting conformity inside the women’s movement by their assertion that lesbians most totally reflected feminists’ dedication to women’s liberation. Support for women’s liberation, nonetheless, led some activists to determine as "political lesbians," an expression of their commitment to gender equality with out an accompanying sexual attraction to women. Along those traces, lesbian poet Adrienne Rich spoke of a "lesbian continuum" and sought to increase the which means of lesbianism and include a range of ways in which ladies expertise intimacy and neighborhood.

For some lesbian feminists, separation into girls-solely communities represented the logical extension of arguments advocating an end to male domination and the strength of connections between ladies. As a political strategy and a preferred manner of life for some, geographical segregation and voluntary immersion in a world of girls-identified girls offered the promise of a society that was much less exploitative and more simply and caring. Acting on these beliefs, they formed ladies-only collectives and communes, together with industrial and cultural enterprises-including a report label (Olivia), a publishing house (Naiad), and music festivals (such as the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival)-run by and catering to feminists. Lesbian feminist separatism peaked within the 1970s and ’80s. It subsided as lesbian feminists joined with heterosexual feminists and gay male activists to demand increased authorized recognition for gay families and relationships and to confront issues such as AIDS, racism, and global commerce.