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AbstractWomen of the early baby boom years in the U.S. came out into an environment in which same-sex desire was stigmatized and criminalized. For working-class lesbians, the bar scene provided an environment in which women could find companionship and a way to live a life decoupled from traditional heterosexual roles. For middle class women, bar life was fraught with legal and social risk, and some–mostly white–women worked to establish a more “socially acceptable” communal life through organizations such as the Daughters of Bilitis. As the women’s movement flourished in the late 1960s and 1970s, women born in the early years of the baby boom (1946–1950) created distinctive lesbian feminist cultures and identities. In contrast to early baby boomers, women born at the tail end of the baby boom (1960–1964) came out in a vastly different cultural context. Second-wave feminism had already peaked, the AIDS epidemic and debates about sexuality changed the context for lesbian identity and activism, and organizing by women of color created the development of an intersectional view of lesbian identity and activism. Through an analysis of feminist magazines, newsletters, and texts of the late 1960s through the 1990s, this paper explores the cultural contexts through which radical lesbian feminist identities arose and, for a period, flourished in the U.S. By the end of the 1980s and 1990s, as second-wave feminism declined, lesbian feminist identity shifted. Over the last decades of the twentieth century, new queer forms of identification emerged, coupled with a decline of lesbian identification among younger people. I argue that these new forms represent both continuity and disruption with earlier forms of lesbian identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, Amazon imagery serves as a case study for the complicated relationship of lesbian separatist movements of the 1970s and the classical Greek tradition. I consider how the use of mythological figures allowed lesbian feminists to rewrite and subvert dominant patriarchal narratives in ways that furthered their revolutionary projects. I argue that the nature of mythology is fundamentally fluid, collaborative, and open to queer reinterpretations and appropriations in ways that are rich with symbolic potential. Furthermore, the creation of separatist communities approximates an act of nation-building, and it is useful to consider other attempts to construct and theorize nations, ranging from Homi Bhabha on post-/anticolonial resistance to Berlant and Freeman on Queer Nationality. In particular, when considering a lesbian movement, we should remember that queer theory is messy because queerness itself is messy and resists boundaries and classification. Furthermore, what Ward frames as "dyke methods" (or dyke-centric queer methods) insist on categories that are fluid, messy, and shifting in their classifications and drawn toward as-yet-unknown queer possibilities. To study lesbian separatists with dyke methods is to embark on "an antiessentialist and interdisciplinary project" without necessarily "making a commitment to balanced ideas" (pp. 82–83). It is my hope that a messy, queer analysis of Amazonian symbolism in the construction of a lesbian nationalism will ultimately offer intriguing, if at times contradictory, possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1970s, in the wake of the Women’s liberation movement and the hippie back- to-the land movement, some women bought plots of land all over the United States and founded what they called ‘lesbian lands’, i.e. women-only separatist communities. Some of them continue to exist today, and are still inhabited by self-called ‘landykes.’ Based on in-person semi-directed interviews conducted in November 2021 and August 2022 with nine women living or having lived on lesbian lands in the same geographical area, this paper investigates their definition of ‘woman’ and how it circumscribes the limits of their community. This paper first argues for a nuanced revision of what radical lesbianism means in these rural lesbian separatist spaces and then proceeds to demonstrate how ‘woman’ has become resignified over the years, de facto barring trans women and challenging lesbian- identified trans men’s place within their community.Correction noticeThe initially published version of this article includes a number of details about the otherwise anonymized participants. Upon revaluation, the participants feared these elements could put their anonymity at risk, and requested corrections to be made to the article to safeguard their privacy. Hence, certain elements of the article were corrected. Throughout the document, all details marked by the participants as potentially identifying information have been edited to further anonymize the community studied, and several line edits have been made to clarify the author’s descriptive intent. No further changes have been made to the article, and neither its substance nor its conclusions have been altered.

Cartoonists Alison Bechdel and Diane DiMassa, writing in a socially and culturally heteronormative context, give life to a fantasy: worlds that, instead of excluding dykes from public space, are entirely organized around lesbian characters. Both reflect the debates within lesbian feminist groups, the tensions between lesbian and straight feminists, and the strategies that can be deployed in the face of discrimination. They create utopian (Bechdel) and dystopian (DiMassa) universes that parallel and question contemporary US realities. DiMassa presents a caricatured, degraded version of US society, focusing on its relation to minorities, as seen through the eyes of a “homicidal lesbian terrorist” intent on reclaiming their right to exist in the world. Bechdel’s syndicated bi-monthly strip is a twenty-five-year running commentary on US politics viewed from a lesbian perspective, that also discusses such feminist and/or LGBTQ+ issues as gender relations, the sodomy laws, trans rights, marriage equality, etc., and that shows her characters evolving on a number of these issues, as many Americans have since the 1980s. For all their provocation and humor, these comics from the margins have remained eerily topical.

Historically, there has been a schism between lesbian and bisexual women that was largely embedded in the rigid rules of the 1970s lesbian feminist movement. Yet while the overt separatist tactics of lesbian feminism that once excluded bisexual women have largely faded away, the current study demonstrates continued evidence of fractures between L (lesbian) v. (B) bisexual women using data from a sample of U.S. adults aged 18-64 stratified by U.S. census categories of age, gender, race/ethnicity and census region collected from online panelists (lesbian women, n = 346; bisexual women, n = 358) and a partial test of Norm-Centered Stigma Theory (NCST) with an emphasis on feminist identity. Specifically, lesbian women's negativity toward bisexual women (looking at measures of authenticity, unfaithfulness, and hypersexuality) is more pronounced than bisexual women's negativity toward lesbian women; however, the findings demonstrate that today's negativity toward bisexual women may not be embedded in feminism as it once was. In addition, the results suggest that feminism may mean something different to bisexual women in comparison to lesbian women (which perhaps may be related to differences in investments in queer activism). Overall, by using NCST's theoretical framework that focuses on the intersecting roles of sexuality, gender, and feminist identity to investigate lesbian women's stigma toward bisexual women and bisexual women's stigma toward lesbian women, this research offers insight into working toward the ultimate goal of ameliorating these schisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1976, a small group of lesbian feminists in Amsterdam named themselves after Jill Johnston's Lesbian Nation: The Feminist Solution (1973) and imagined a separate lesbian society, free from heteropatriarchal oppression. Despite naming themselves after Johnston, Lesbian Nation's main aim was inspired by French feminist theorist Monique Wittig: to subvert the existing symbolic order, and create a new one in its wake. Based on archival research and interviews, this article shows how Lesbian Nation combined both lesbian separatist and cultural feminist tendencies, by experimenting with lesbian identity and creating a women's culture. Discussing the similarities and differences between Lesbian Nation and its predecessor, Paarse September, this article illustrates how lesbian organising evolved in the Netherlands. More broadly, this article adds to lesbian feminist historiography, showing how a small group shaped their own lesbian feminist ideology – and brought this into practice – on a local scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to present two adventures of Lesbian separatism - one excavated in the scope of literature and composed of ideas and letters, the other embodied in the concrete experience of women, composed of earth, seeds and gardening tools. Discussing the relevance of fiction to the imagination of anti-patriarchal and anticapitalist life alternatives, the text proposes to think about lesbian utopias in the company of ecofeminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including influence of women in the U.S. foreign relations with China; 1936 custody battle between Warren and Mabel Eaton; and women's dissent in the form of lesbian separatism in the contemporary U.S.

The 1970s and 1980s witnessed the founding of a wave of rural lesbian-separatist communities across the Western world. In Australia, three large women's lands were established in rural northern New South Wales. This article explores the ways in which these communities sought to reimagine ways of being as women and as lesbians. Utilizing transnational and interstate feminist networks, their founders established them as collectives that overtly challenged capitalist understandings of property and human relationships with the land. Through an exclusion of men, lesbian-separatists envisaged these communities as a space in which women could break free from patriarchal structures. In their place, women explored new ideals of community and intimacy. Collective living allowed women to share daily chores and exchange political ideas and personal experiences. Breaking down monogamous relationship structures enabled women to explore non-monogamy and free sexual expression and allowed alternative practices of intimacy to emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the use of women-centered or women-only spaces within feminist restaurants and cafés in Ontario, Canada and contextualises them within the larger history of Canadian feminist restaurants. It contrasts the terms women's spaces and women-centered, and mentions these are not the same as designated lesbian space. It states that prior to the 1960s lone women in public spaces were sexually suspect or vulnerable and could receive unwanted attention.

Synopsis In the late 1980s, critiques of the universalism of second-wave feminism led to the re-evaluation of lesbian feminism, a diverse movement that had been developing in North American and West European context since the early 1970s. New generations of lesbians increasingly rejected many of its ideals and stereotyped past lesbian movements as essentialist and exclusionary. Contending that as gender continues to be relevant to sexuality politics, in this paper we discuss whether lesbian feminisms might have something to offer contemporary LGBT and queer politics. Our investigation focuses on re-examining the limitations and possibilities of lesbian feminisms for contemporary politics, practice and theory. Using a question-and-answer format, the paper is structured as a discussion between three separate/individual authors, each of whom is differently situated. The result is a cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, and multi-generational assessment by three post-lesbian feminists working with gender and sexualities in geography and sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary feminist discourses, lesbian separatism is often mocked. Whether blamed as a central reason for feminism's alleged failure or seen as an unrealistic, utopian vision, lesbian separatism is a maligned social and cultural formation. This article traces the intellectual roots of lesbian feminism from the early 1970s in The Furies and Radicalesbians through the work of Julia Penelope and Sarah Lucia Hoagland in the 1980s and 1990s, then considers four feminist and lesbian organizations that offer innovative engagements with lesbian separatism. Olivia Records operated as a separatist enterprise, producing and distributing womyn's music during the 1970s and 1980s. Two book distributors, Women in Distribution, which operated in the 1970s, and Diaspora Distribution, which operated in the 1980s, offer another approach to lesbian separatism as a form of economic and entrepreneurial engagement. Finally, Sinister Wisdom, a lesbian-feminist literary and arts journal, enacts a number of different forms of lesbian separatism during its forty-year history. These four examples demonstrate economic and cultural investments of lesbian separatism and situate its investments in larger visionary feminist projects. More than a rigid ideology, lesbian separatism operates as a feminist process, a method for living in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of second wave feminism and the emergence of an increasingly visible and articulate community of lesbians within feminist circles in the 1970s, an influential strand of radical feminism began to advocate separatism as a political strategy for lesbians. Simultaneously, the Australian women’s movement was opening up a space in which it was possible to acknowledge the dual role of some women as lesbians and as mothers, and a small minority of lesbians were using artificial insemination and other methods to conceive children in the context of lesbian relationships. The co-existence of these two strands of lesbian feminist thought gave rise to a new issue: that of the place of the boy-child in lesbian feminist ideology and communities. Drawing on oral history interviews and archival research, this article explores the debate about boy children in Australian lesbian feminist circles in the 1970s and 1980s. A range of views were expressed, from the suggestion that boy children presented an opportunity to raise a new generation of pro-feminist men, to the view that the boy child threatened women’s autonomy and need for sisterhood. This article traces the development of these arguments and considers the impact of the debate on the mothers of boys, their boy-children and the broader lesbian feminist community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of queer and transgender studies has greatly contributed to feminist and lesbian understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality and also has resulted in rifts, tensions, and border wars. One such tension is around the inclusion of trans women in women-only space, such as the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (Michfest). In this ethnophenomenological study, we interviewed and surveyed 43 cisgender women who attended Michfest in 2013. Participants had a variety of perspectives on trans inclusion and on the dialogue surrounding it, and these paralleled intersections, frictions, and tensions between feminism, queer theory, and transgender studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Women’s Warehouse (1979–1981) provided a short-lived and unofficial headquarters for the social and cultural activity of the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) in Sydney, Australia. This paper writes an introductory history to the Women’s Warehouse through the case study of the Women’s Warehouse Screenprinters, one of the most significant collectives to operate in the space. This approach allows for a focused understanding of how feminist ideologies were interpreted and implemented by members of the house via, for example, collective ownership, group authorship, commitment to local community concerns and the non-sexist representation of women. The Women’s Warehouse was an unproclaimed, yet undeniably, lesbian feminist space. This paper begins research into the feminist politics, presentation and perception of the house. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1975, a group of lesbian feminist separatists in Austin, Texas, made history by publishing a small newsletter named Goodbye to All That. The collective of women assembled one of the earliest known lesbian feminist publications in Texas to challenge patriarchy in the left and gay rights movements. This textual analysis guided by standpoint feminist theory provides a historical understanding of how a segment of second-wave lesbian feminists—physically removed from gay- and lesbian-friendly urban centers—utilized a newsletter to communicate with each other, at a time when mainstream media ignored their unique issues. When compared with feminist publications outside of the South, Goodbye to All That adopted a unique tone that could be partially influenced by its cultural heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the history of the feminist collectives Ain't I a Woman? (AIAW?) and the Iowa City Women's Press (ICWP), with a particular focus on their role in feminist print culture and feminist activity in Iowa City, Iowa. Details on the relationship between lesbian and feminism during the early 1970s are also presented. Other topics include feminist theory, lesbian separatism, and the effects of economic conditions on the collectives.

The article discusses the interest in parthenogenesis, or virgin birth, among lesbian feminists and separatists in the United States in the latter 20th century. The implications of parthenogenesis for lesbian culture and the possibility of creating sustainable all-female communities are discussed, as is the question of whether woman-only reproduction is a biological possibility. The development of lesbian separatist communities in the U.S. is also discussed, as are the writings on parthenogenesis in the lesbian newsletter "Daughter Visions."

An essay is presented on the contributions of articles and special issues on the journal "Social Text" regarding the development of queer social theory. It mentions the essay "Gay Language as Political Praxis: The Poetry of Frank O'Hara," by Bruce Boone who questions sexuality. It cites the essay "Right On, Girlfriend!" by Douglas Crimp who describes AIDS as the effect of separatism and liberalism. It adds the essay of Lisa Duggan which reflects on the gap among queer activism and theory.

This paper reports findings from a pilot study using semi-structured interviews to explore the ways self-identified bisexual women see their identity fitting in to the range of sexual identities provided in U.S. society, specifically how bisexual women fit (or don't fit) within the lesbian community. Previous research has documented that there is a "chilly climate" between lesbians and bisexual women, as well as general disbelief within the broader LBGT community in the existence of bisexuality. This paper outlines three themes that emerge pertaining to this chilly climate for bisexuals in the LBGT community: (1) Discrimination from the LBGT community (2) Bi invisibility and (3) Tensions with lesbians. Further, the ways in which bisexual women construct identity and community despite this chilly climate are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about the Lesbian-hatred the author and her first lover experienced as teenagers and how finding a strong Lesbian-identified community in 1970 made all the difference for her as a lifelong Lesbian. The Lesbian Feminist politics and ideals of equality and support and questioning all patriarchal/heterosexual/mainstream values and oppressive attitudes in the Lesbian community also made a huge difference for her since she is working-class. It was a wonderful time of female-only space with many kinds of events, and later Lesbian writing and Lesbian music (euphemistically called "Women's Music.") That community is mostly gone now and what remains is often segregated by more privileged Lesbians from less privileged Lesbians because of classism and other oppressions. Increasing acceptance of "Male to Female Transsexuals" as Lesbians, as well as increased embracing of male-identified "femininity" continues to damage what remains of Lesbian community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An overview of the history, politics, and marketing of the 1970s lesbian-feminist music movement. This article addresses the specific audience created by and receptive to the women's music "sound" and message, and examines some of the backlash and critique concerning the meaning and application of a separatist message. Artists' responses to questions of women-only space and coalition building are included in the analysis of concert and recording politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the radical feminism among lesbian separatists. Effort to bridge the gap between disciplinary approaches in the study of feminism-related terms; Political involvement among lesbians; Challenge the validity of materialist and social politics from a radical women-centered point of view.

An introduction is presented that discusses the issue theme of U.S. political struggles regarding the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) people, on topics such as a lesbian collective in Texas, the meaning of the word 'queer,' and viral videos.

The article discusses the author's essay "Fandom and Male Privilege" written seven years ago. It specifically reports on the essay's relevance after seven year. It is reported that the essay is about a scenario in which male comic book fans enter into the spaces shaped by and mainly inhabited by female fans. It also refers to several changes in comics and fandom in the last seven years including openly gay characters and women's space.