lesbian feminism

lesbian feminism, a subset of feminism that emerged in the mid-to-late 20th century at the convergence of the women’s movement, the gay rights movement, and the sexual revolution. Lesbian feminists consider same-sex relationships legitimate and use their lesbian identity as a basis for community building and collective action. Lesbian feminism challenges the perception of heterosexuality and male supremacy as “normal” and presents alternative ways of thinking about gender and power.

Historical background

Before the 1960s, thriving gay and lesbian communities developed across the United States, especially in urban areas, where they often centred on bars or private homes. During that era, many lesbians assumed feminine (“femme” or “fem”) or masculine (“butch”) gender roles—and, often, manners of dress. Many of those communities functioned underground as a means of protection from pervasive hostility, physical violence, social ostracism, harassment, and loss of employment. Because lesbians were operating within a culture that viewed homosexuality as a form of mental disorder and a threat to the well-being of American society, their social, legal, and economic concerns—like those of their male counterparts—were believed better kept private. Slowly that idea began to be challenged. In 1955 a group of women led by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon formed the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first national organization for lesbians. Members of DOB organized for social and political purposes, seeking to end the sense of isolation many lesbians felt, to educate gay women about their legal rights, and to increase their social acceptance.

With the rise of feminism’s second wave in the 1960s, the specific concerns of lesbians emerged as part of a broader challenge against sexism. Lesbians played a prominent role in many new feminist organizations, helping to organize for equity in the workplace, the home, and the courts. Concurrently, the civil rights and gay rights movements and changing attitudes toward sexuality created openings for a more-visible and defiant attack on sexual oppression. However, many taboos still surrounded lesbianism within feminist organizations in the 1960s, and male sexism constrained lesbians within the gay rights movement. Betty Friedan, the founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW), famously called lesbians a “lavender menace.” She asserted that they threatened to taint the reputation of the feminist movement, driving women away out of fear of association and diverting attention from more-important campaigns for women’s equality. Likewise, within mixed-sex gay rights organizations, some lesbians found their concerns marginalized by male counterparts who were no more committed to ending sexism than was the broader society. Lesbian feminists responded by creating their own organizations in order to transform shame into pride and to challenge the belief that equated lesbianism with deviance.

Theoretical underpinnings

Lesbian feminism presented one way 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 desire, that it also functioned as an institution that supported male supremacy and female subordination. Romantic love, familial structures, traditional gender roles, and even the U.S. economic structure reinforced heterosexuality, making it compulsory and leaving its putative normalcy unquestioned. At the same time that heterosexuality helped perpetuate the subordination of women, it reinforced the benefits that women could gain from participation in partnerships with men, which gave them added status and economic privileges. The threat of losing those advantages kept women from challenging the status quo and acting in ways that might jeopardize their status. As one of the first lesbian feminist groups, the Radicalesbians, argued in a 1970 essay, “The Woman-Identified Woman,” women were called lesbians (pejoratively), regardless of their preferred partners, when they dared to act as if they were equal to men. Fear of being labeled a lesbian acted as a powerful deterrent against women’s push for equality as well as constraining the development of solidarity among women.

The second claim of lesbian feminists, given the central importance 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 personal, economic, and sexual independence that feminists believed all women should possess. That analysis helped provide insight into the way that society constructed its notion of womanhood, recognizing that lesbians conformed to many traits commonly construed as masculine. Moreover, some lesbian feminists asserted the superiority of women’s ways of living, suggesting that women who challenged society’s views of male supremacy could discover more egalitarian and less superficial ways of relating to each other. Using that rationale, many lesbian feminists criticized butch-and-femme role-playing as mere imitation of an oppressive heterosexuality.

Within the context of the late 1960s and the 1970s, lesbian feminists translated these ideas into a mass movement for women’s liberation. That movement primarily organized women at the local level into small groups, supported by an array of national publications, businesses, and gatherings. A branch of the broader feminist movement, lesbian feminism remained both connected to the larger struggle for women’s liberation and highly critical of it.

Strategically, the lesbian feminist movement emphasized its connection to broader feminist struggles and stressed community building among women. Many of those in the movement believed that they constituted a revolutionary vanguard, the forefront of a broader political movement to create a more egalitarian society. If society taught that women were inferior, then lesbians, or “women-identified women,” experienced the greatest oppression, took the biggest risks, and most clearly demonstrated the depth of their commitment to gender equality. By defining lesbian feminism as centrally important to feminism, lesbian feminists helped bring greater acceptance within the women’s movement to those who identified as lesbian, and they fostered an environment that made it possible for many women to name their desires and find consistency between their personal lives and their political ideals. At the same time, lesbian feminists were criticized for promoting conformity within the women’s movement through their assertion that lesbians most fully reflected feminists’ commitment to women’s liberation. Support for women’s liberation, however, led some activists to identify as “political lesbians,” an expression of their commitment to gender equality without an accompanying sexual attraction to women. Along those lines, lesbian poet Adrienne Rich spoke of a “lesbian continuum” and sought to expand the meaning of lesbianism and include a range of ways in which women experience intimacy and community.

For some lesbian feminists, separation into women-only communities represented the logical extension of arguments advocating an end to male domination and the strength of connections between women. As a political strategy and a preferred way of life for some, geographical segregation and voluntary immersion in a world of women-identified women presented the promise of a society that was less exploitative and more just and caring. Acting on these beliefs, they formed women-only collectives and communes, along with commercial and cultural enterprises—including a record 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 in the 1970s and ’80s. It subsided as lesbian feminists joined with heterosexual feminists and gay male activists to demand increased legal recognition for gay families and relationships and to confront issues such as AIDS, racism, and global trade.