#radicalesbians

[efemmera-archive]

The Woman Identified Woman: manifesto of gay liberation group "Radicalesbians," circa 1970.

"What is a lesbian? A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion. She is the woman who, often beginning at an extremely early age, acts in accordance with her inner compulsion to be a more complete and freer human being than her society--perhaps then, but certainly later--cares to allow her."

[coochiequeens]

OPINION: Male 'Lesbians' ... A Brief History Of An Invasive Species - Reduxx

Among the first casualties of transgenderism and the ideology it spawned were the sexual and social boundaries of lesbians. But very few kno

Among the first casualties of transgenderism and the ideology it spawned were the sexual and social boundaries of lesbians. But very few know that the problem is far older than this nouveau iteration of what is often referred to as a “culture war.”

In recent years, the exclusivity of on- and offline lesbian spaces have been repeatedly subject to scrutiny from those who clamor for the “inclusion” of trans-identified males. Women who assert their right to keep these spaces single-sex, or who express their attractions as being rooted in sex and not the mystical concept of gender, are met with hostility and branded as bigots.

For example, in 2012, Planned Parenthood of Toronto held a workshop called Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling: Breaking Down Sexual Barriers for Queer Trans Women. The purpose of the workshop was to discuss the “barriers” (cotton underwear) faced by “queer trans women” in “queer women’s communities.” The workshop description also noted that participants would strategize ways to “overcome” these barriers.

The Cotton Ceiling workshop was recently referenced at a court hearing in May. Allison Bailey, a barrister and lesbian activist, took Stonewall and Garden Court Chambers to an employment tribunal for policing her livelihood due to her views on gender ideology. During the course of the hearing, the idea that lesbians must include males in their sexuality was likened to the racial integration of South Africa. 

But this was hardly the first time lesbians have been deemed “sexual racists” for not wanting to affirm the identity of males. Nor was it the first time that trans-identified males had attempted to force their way into lesbian communities and lives. 

In fact, this is a phenomena goes back decades — right to the beginnings of modern lesbian social and political organizing.

While today’s transgender movement tries to position nebulous conceptions of “gender” over the factual reality and importance of sex, the lesbians of the early gay liberation movement suffered no such confusion. In fact, many who were initially involved in the Gay Liberation Front, which was formed after the 1969 Stonewall Riots, shifted their focus to the growing women’s movement instead. They felt that the gay rights movement was male-dominated and that their interests would be better served by organizing for the specific interests of their own sex.

One of the groups formed by these early lesbian activists was the Radicalesbians. Founded in 1970, the Radicalesbians distributed a manifesto titled “The Woman-Identified Woman” at the Second Congress to Unite Women in New York City. The manifesto focused heavily on the reality of living as a female in a male-dominated society. It helped set the stage for later radical feminist and lesbian feminist thinking.

An early example of heterosexual males in the lesbian movement and lesbian lives came later that same year, when folk singer Beth Elliot (Elliott Basil Mattiuzzi) sent a “Letter from a Transsexual” to the radical feminist newspaper It Ain’t Me Babe. “I am a transsexual,” Elliot wrote. “On the intellectual and emotional levels, I know myself to be a woman; on the physical level, my own body denies me this.” Elliot also described how he met and had sex with an “exclusively gay” woman who “could really see my being a woman.”

The editors of the paper invited Elliot to a conversation where they tried to talk him out of undergoing a sex change operation, telling him that it “shouldn’t matter whether one is born with female or male genitalia. That’s our point.” It continues: “As your new reality emerges, as you are able to live it to any degree, you should be able to feel differently about your body.”

Nevertheless, in 1971, Elliot joined and became the vice president of the San Francisco chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis — a lesbian political organization — despite some members’ protestations. He also served as the editor of the group’s newsletter, Sisters. However, accusations of sexual harassment against Elliot in 1972 led to a vote which removed him from the group and barred the inclusion of any trans-identified males in the chapter.

Unable to take a hint, Elliot joined the organizing committee of the West Coast Lesbian Conference in 1973, where he was also slated to perform. On the first night of the conference, a lesbian separatist group called the Gutter Dykes passed out leaflets protesting the presence of a man. Elliot did briefly perform but left soon afterward. 

The following day, keynote speaker Robin Morgan amended her address in light of the previous day’s events. Her speech, titled “Lesbianism and Feminism: Synonyms or Contradictions?” contained some strong opinions about referring to men as women.

“No, I will not call a male ‘she,'” Morgan passionately declared, “Thirty-two years of suffering in this androcentric society and of surviving, have earned me the name ‘woman.’ One walk down the street by a male transvestite, five minutes of his being hassled (which hemay enjoy), and then he dares, he dares to think he understands our pain? No. In our mothers’ names and in our own, we must not call him sister.”

Morgan’s words rippled through feminist and lesbian communities over the proceeding decade. 

By 1977, DYKE magazine had published a six-page feature titled “Can Men Be Women? Some Lesbians Think So! Transsexuals in the Women’s Movement.” The story presented a conversation about some lesbians’ baffling acceptance of men who claim to be same-sex attracted females, like themselves.

Janet, one of the interviewees stated: “That is what is so weird to me, what I find so scary about the way a lot of Lesbians have reacted to the transsexual issue. The attitude seems to be that however someone presents themself, that is the way you are supposed to see them … No distinction is made between respecting someone else and suspending your own perceptions. It is always tempting to be passive.”

Fellow interviewee Liza agreed, writing: “It is also very tempting to be generous. I think that a lot of Lesbians say they have gone through such a hard time being accepted as Lesbians and now these poor transsexuals are having such a hard time and here we are in the same boat, both oppressed by the same culture. If we recognize them as our sisters it helps everybody. It is very generous and I appreciate that in women, but it is really shortsighted.”

It is incredible how the discussions on this topic from more than 30 years ago feel like they could have been plucked from any heated social media page today. 

In 1978, the issue was given even greater prominence in the book Gyn/Ecology by Mary Daly, a radical feminist and theologian who taught at Boston College for more than three decades. In a section of her book, “Boundary Violation and the Frankenstein Phenomenon,” Daly opined that “transsexualism is an example of male surgical siring which invades the female world with substitutes.” 

Daly was a dissertation advisor for Janice Raymond, who went on to become an even more prominent critic of transsexualism. In 1979, Raymond published The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, which highlights many of the issues we are still dealing with. In the book, Raymond argues that transsexualism reinforces gender stereotypes and that it is just another method of patriarchal oppression. 

An entire section of the book titled “Sappho by Surgery: The Transsexually Constructed Lesbian-Feminist” deals with the issue of men who claim to be lesbians. Such a man, writes Raymond, “attempts to possess women at a deeper level, this time under the guise of challenging rather than conforming to the role and behavior of stereotyped femininity.”

In a particularly prophetic section, Raymond raises some questions that one could argue reflect the state of the modern lesbian community:

Will the acceptance of transsexually constructed lesbian-feminists who have lost only their outward appendages of physical masculinity lead to the containment and control of lesbian feminists? Will every lesbian-feminist space become a harem?

The only point where Raymond seems to have missed the mark is in the fact that most male lesbians today have not lost their “outward appendage” and, in fact, are very proud of it.

In his book, Transgender History, prominent trans-identified male “lesbian” Susan Stryker helpfully provides us with evidence that Raymond’s ideas were alive and well several years after her book’s publication. 

Stryker includes a fiery excerpt from an anonymous 1986 letter to the editor of the San Francisco lesbian newspaper Coming Up:

When an estrogenated man with breasts loves women, that is not lesbianism, that is mutilated perversion. [Such an individual] is not a threat to the lesbian community, he is an outrage to us. He is not a lesbian, he is a mutant man, a self-made freak, a deformity, an insult. He deserves a slap in the face. After that, he deserves to have his body and his mind made well again.

The gay community was still grappling with transsexual (at this point also often referred to as transgender) inclusion during the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. 

Contrary to the claim of some modern trans activists that the “T” was always part of the acronym, that was not yet the case. The national steering committee of the march did seek to add “transgender” to the title, but it did not receive the necessary majority vote to do so. Over the next few years, however, it became more common for lesbian, gay, and bisexual organizations to include “transgender” in their names and transgender issues in their mandates.

Around this time, another controversy was brewing regarding the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival—often referred to as Michfest—because the predominantly lesbian festival had made clear in 1991 that the event was for “womyn-born womyn,” i.e., females. 

This made some males very angry, and they organized an annual demonstration named “Camp Trans” to protest the fact that women had created a female-exclusive entertainment space. Michfest was also criticized by prominent LGBT organizations like GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign. The festival, which began in 1976, held its final event in 2015 after years of facing increasingly ruthless scrutiny.

The termination of Michfest marked the end of an era, and the beginning of the end in general for lesbian spaces where same-sex attracted women could socialize with one another without the incursion of males.

Lesbian bars were also dying out — not even notoriously-woke Portland had any lesbian bars left by 2016. Identity politics like those that shut down Michfest made it a minefield to create spaces and events that would exclude males who identified as lesbian women. In 2021, Smithsonian Magazine reported that there were only 15 lesbian bars left in the entirety of the United States.

It is now 2022.

Same-sex marriage is legal, and the expectation that homosexual people are free to live their lives is commonplace. Yet, we are facing a new predicament where this generation of lesbians are rapidly losing access to their needed exclusive communities. The music festivals and lesbian conferences once attended by hundreds and even thousands of women are a thing of the past, and any attempt to hold a similar event today would be met with rabid protest.

All of that being said… I do believe there is a silver lining, though it be a somewhat bleak one. 

Trans rights activists are becoming increasingly emboldened in their abusive behavior towards lesbians (and all women) that the trickle of criticism seeping through the cracks is inevitably bound to turn into a flood. More and more lesbians are speaking out, joined by feminists and women from all walks of life, and even prominent voices, such as that of Harry Potter author JK Rowling, are joining in to apply pressure. 

It might feel sometimes like we are stuck rehashing arguments from the 1970s, but we should be proud to take up the mantle of the women who saw this coming for the benefit of those yet to come.

By Eva Kurilova

Eva is a guest essayist for Reduxx. A regular contributor at Gender Dissent, Eva is passionate about promoting lesbian activism and protecting women's sex-based rights. You can find her traversing the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, Canada with her partner and their husky, Freya.

[queersatanic]

"The Woman Identified Woman" by Radicalesbians (1970)

Source: Women’s Liberation Movement Print Culture

This is an important historical document in the context of U.S. feminism and has some ideas that are still provocative and useful today.

But the ideas in this manifesto need to be read with the understanding of where this group ended up going in practice: female separatism, non-facetious misandry, and biphobia.

The manifesto also has nothing to say about white supremacy and the need for cross-gender solidarity among Black, Brown, and Indigenous populations; or how the experience of being transgender complicates (and enriches) lesbianism.

For more formats, see The Anarchist Library, otherwise full text is below the break.

What is a lesbian? A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion. She is the woman who, often beginning at an extremely early age, acts in accordance with her inner compulsion to be a more complete and freer human being than her society – perhaps then, but certainly later – cares to allow her. These needs and actions, over a period of years, bring her into painful conflict with people, situations, the accepted ways of thinking, feeling and behaving, until she is in a state of continual war with everything around her, and usually with her self. She may not be fully conscious of the political implications of what for her began as personal necessity, but on some level she has not been able to accept the limitations and oppression laid on her by the most basic role of her society—the female role. The turmoil she experiences tends to induce guilt proportional to the degree to which she feels she is not meeting social expectations, and/or eventually drives her to question and analyze what the rest of her society more or less accepts. She is forced to evolve her own life pattern, often living much of her life alone, learning usually much earlier than her “straight” (heterosexual) sisters about the essential aloneness of life (which the myth of marriage obscures) and about the reality of illusions. To the extent that she cannot expel the heavy socialization that goes with being female, she can never truly find peace with herself. For she is caught somewhere between accepting society’s view of her – in which case she cannot accept herself – and coming to understand what this sexist society has done to her and why it is functional and necessary for it to do so. Those of us who work that through find ourselves on the other side of a tortuous journey through a night that may have been decades long. The perspective gained from that journey, the liberation of self, the inner peace, the real love of self and of all women, is something to be shared with all women – because we are all women.

It should first be understood that lesbianism, like male homosexuality, is a category of behavior possible only in a sexist society characterized by rigid sex roles and dominated by male supremacy. Those sex roles dehumanize women by defining us as a supportive/serving caste in relation to the master caste of men, and emotionally cripple men by demanding that they be alienated from their own bodies and emotions in order to perform their economic/political/military functions effectively. Homosexuality is a by-product of a particular way of setting up roles (or approved patterns of behavior) on the basis of sex; as such it is an inauthentic (not consonant with “reality”) category. In a society in which men do not oppress women, and sexual expression is allowed to follow feelings, the categories of homosexuality and heterosexuality would disappear.

But lesbianism is also different from male homosexuality, and serves a different function in the society. “Dyke” is a different kind of put-down from “faggot”, although both imply you are not playing your socially assigned sex role ... are not therefore a “real woman” or a “real man.” The grudging admiration felt for the tomboy, and the queasiness felt around a sissy boy point to the same thing: the contempt in which women—or those who play a female role—are held. And the investment in keeping women in that contemptuous role is very great. Lesbian is a word, the label, the condition that holds women in line. When a woman hears this word tossed her way, she knows she is stepping out of line. She knows that she has crossed the terrible boundary of her sex role. She recoils, she protests, she reshapes her actions to gain approval. Lesbian is a label invented by the Man to throw at any woman who dares to be his equal, who dares to challenge his prerogatives (including that of all women as part of the exchange medium among men), who dares to assert the primacy of her own needs. To have the label applied to people active in women’s liberation is just the most recent instance of a long history; older women will recall that not so long ago, any woman who was successful, independent, not orienting her whole life about a man, would hear this word. For in this sexist society, for a woman to be independent means she can’t be a woman – she must be a dyke. That in itself should tell us where women are at. It says as clearly as can be said: women and person are contradictory terms. For a lesbian is not considered a “real woman. ” And yet, in popular thinking, there is really only one essential difference between a lesbian and other women: that of sexual orientation – which is to say, when you strip off all the packaging, you must finally realize that the essence of being a “woman” is to get fucked by men.

“Lesbian” is one of the sexual categories by which men have divided up humanity. While all women are dehumanized as sex objects, as the objects of men they are given certain compensations: identification with his power, his ego, his status, his protection (from other males), feeling like a “real woman, ” finding social acceptance by adhering to her role, etc. Should a woman confront herself by confronting another woman, there are fewer rationalizations, fewer buffers by which to avoid the stark horror of her dehumanized condition. Herein we find the overriding fear of many women toward being used as a sexual object by a woman, which not only will bring her no male-connected compensations, but also will reveal the void which is woman’s real situation. This dehumanization is expressed when a straight woman learns that a sister is a lesbian; she begins to relate to her lesbian sister as her potential sex object, laying a surrogate male role on the lesbian. This reveals her heterosexual conditioning to make herself into an object when sex is potentially involved in a relationship, and it denies the lesbian her full humanity. For women, especially those in the movement, to perceive their lesbian sisters through this male grid of role definitions is to accept this male cultural conditioning and to oppress their sisters much as they themselves have been oppressed by men. Are we going to continue the male classification system of defining all females in sexual relation to some other category of people? Affixing the label lesbian not only to a woman who aspires to be a person, but also to any situation of real love, real solidarity, real primacy among women, is a primary form of divisiveness among women: it is the condition which keeps women within the confines of the feminine role, and it is the debunking/scare term that keeps women from forming any primary attachments, groups, or associations among ourselves.

Women in the movement have in most cases gone to great lengths to avoid discussion and confrontation with the issue of lesbianism. It puts people up-tight. They are hostile, evasive, or try to incorporate it into some ‘broader issue. ” They would rather not talk about it. If they have to, they try to dismiss it as a ‘lavender herring. ” But it is no side issue. It is absolutely essential to the success and fulfillment of the women’s liberation movement that this issue be dealt with. As long as the label “dyke” can be used to frighten women into a less militant stand, keep her separate from her sisters, keep her from giving primacy to anything other than men and family-then to that extent she is controlled by the male culture. Until women see in each other the possibility of a primal commitment which includes sexual love, they will be denying themselves the love and value they readily accord to men, thus affirming their second-class status. As long as male acceptability is primary—both to individual women and to the movement as a whole—the term lesbian will be used effectively against women. Insofar as women want only more privileges within the system, they do not want to antagonize male power. They instead seek acceptability for women’s liberation, and the most crucial aspect of the acceptability is to deny lesbianism – i.e. , to deny any fundamental challenge to the basis of the female. It should also be said that some younger, more radical women have honestly begun to discuss lesbianism, but so far it has been primarily as a sexual “alternative” to men. This, however, is still giving primacy to men, both because the idea of relating more completely to women occurs as a negative reaction to men, and because the lesbian relationship is being characterized simply by sex, which is divisive and sexist. On one level, which is both personal and political, women may withdraw emotional and sexual energies from men, and work out various alternatives for those energies in their own lives. On a different political/psychological level, it must be understood that what is crucial is that women begin disengaging from male-defined response patterns. In the privacy of our own psyches, we must cut those cords to the core. For irrespective of where our love and sexual energies flow, if we are male-identified in our heads, we cannot realize our autonomy as human beings.

But why is it that women have related to and through men? By virtue of having been brought up in a male society, we have internalized the male culture’s definition of ourselves. That definition consigns us to sexual and family functions, and excludes us from defining and shaping the terms of our lives. In exchange for our psychic servicing and for performing society’s non-profit-making functions, the man confers on us just one thing: the slave status which makes us legitimate in the eyes of the society in which we live. This is called “femininity” or “being a real woman” in our cultural lingo. We are authentic, legitimate, real to the extent that we are the property of some man whose name we bear. To be a woman who belongs to no man is to be invisible, pathetic, inauthentic, unreal. He confirms his image of us — of what we have to be in order to be acceptable by him — but not our real selves; he confirms our womanhood—as he defines it, in relation to him— but cannot confirm our personhood, our own selves as absolutes. As long as we are dependent on the male culture for this definition, for this approval, we cannot be free.

The consequence of internalizing this role is an enormous reservoir of self-hate. This is not to say the self-hate is recognized or accepted as such; indeed most women would deny it. It may be experienced as discomfort with her role, as feeling empty, as numbness, as restlessness, as a paralyzing anxiety at the center. Alternatively, it may be expressed in shrill defensiveness of the glory and destiny of her role. But it does exist, often beneath the edge of her consciousness, poisoning her existence, keeping her alienated from herself, her own needs, and rendering her a stranger to other women. They try to escape by identifying with the oppressor, living through him, gaining status and identity from his ego, his power, his accomplishments. And by not identifying with other “empty vessels” like themselves. Women resist relating on all levels to other women who will reflect their own oppression, their own secondary status, their own self-hate. For to confront another woman is finally to confront one’s self-the self we have gone to such lengths to avoid. And in that mirror we know we cannot really respect and love that which we have been made to be.

As the source of self-hate and the lack of real self are rooted in our male-given identity, we must create a new sense of self. As long as we cling to the idea of “being a woman," we will sense some conflict with that incipient self, that sense of I, that sense of a whole person. It is very difficult to realize and accept that being “feminine” and being a whole person are irreconcilable. Only women can give to each other a new sense of self. That identity we have to develop with reference to ourselves, and not in relation to men. This consciousness is the revolutionary force from which all else will follow, for ours is an organic revolution. For this we must be available and supportive to one another, give our commitment and our love, give the emotional support necessary to sustain this movement. Our energies must flow toward our sisters, not backward toward our oppressors. As long as woman’s liberation tries to free women without facing the basic heterosexual structure that binds us in one-to-one relationship with our oppressors, tremendous energies will continue to flow into trying to straighten up each particular relationship with a man, into finding how to get better sex, how to turn his head around-into trying to make the “new man” out of him, in the delusion that this will allow us to be the “new woman. ” This obviously splits our energies and commitments, leaving us unable to be committed to the construction of the new patterns which will liberate us.

It is the primacy of women relating to women, of women creating a new consciousness of and with each other, which is at the heart of women’s liberation, and the basis for the cultural revolution. Together we must find, reinforce, and validate our authentic selves. As we do this, we confirm in each other that struggling, incipient sense of pride and strength, the divisive barriers begin to melt, we feel this growing solidarity with our sisters. We see ourselves as prime, find our centers inside of ourselves. We find receding the sense of alienation, of being cut off, of being behind a locked window, of being unable to get out what we know is inside. We feel a realness, feel at last we are coinciding with ourselves. With that real self, with that consciousness, we begin a revolution to end the imposition of all coercive identifications, and to achieve maximum autonomy in human expression.

[woman-loving]

For the record, and I apologize if people are already tired of this topic, I want to bring up other possible ‘sources’ of tension among lesbians and bi women, not because I want to go to bat for lesbian feminism or separatism, but because I genuinely think there are multiple factors in these conflicts. I think that because lesbian feminism and separatism are very unpopular (among non-lesbian feminists), it’s easy to reach for them as explanations for actions we want to condemn, but I think this can leave some of these other factors unexposed and unexamined.

I also do think there are more prominent legacies of lesbian feminism than, say, thinking bi women can’t use butch/femme (which wasn’t specifically on the lesbian feminist agenda), that might be easier to identify if we actually look at what lesbian feminists said. It’s A Myth that lesbian feminists precipitated a sudden, universal changeover between an understanding of “lesbian” that included bi women to one that didn’t. However, lesbian feminists did create a definition of lesbian as not only feminist, but as the vanguard of feminism. This is a revision to what I was arguing yesterday (again, my thoughts aren’t fully formed), but I think the addition of that understanding of lesbianism to the mix is more of an ongoing legacy of lesbian feminism that continues to influence tensions among lesbians and bi women. This is something that continues to be picked up and passed on among lesbians and bi women, sometimes without even connecting it with “lesbian feminism” specifically and while combining it with other positions that contradict lesbian feminism (such as innate divisions between sexual orientations, or lesbianism as defined primarily by sexual attraction).

This book I’m reading (Separatism and Women’s Communities, Dana R. Shugar, 1995) has a chapter that looks at the 1970 article “The Woman Identified Woman” by the Radicalesbians, and talks about how it basically flipped the script on how lesbianism was assessed within the predominantly white radical feminist movement at the time, and how its ideas were taken up by other lesbian feminists:

Yet radical-feminist uneasiness over issues of sexuality in general (Echols’s study details the avoidance of or even refusal in radical-feminist theory to approach constructively most issues of sexuality) made even these groups less than hospitable for many lesbians. Further, radical-feminist discourse on the topic of lesbianism produced a surprising number of articles that seemed bent more on the preservation of the status quo than they were on the promotion of a ‘radical’ understanding. For example, though she left NOW [National Organization for Women] in disagreement with its conservative governmental practices, Ti-Grace Atkinson approached NOW’s position on lesbians in her early radical-feminist essays. In a 1970 speech entitled ‘Lesbianism and Feminism,’ Atkinson claimed:

“... lesbianism is totally dependent, as a concept as well as an activity, on male supremacy. This face, alone, should make a feminist nervous. ... lesbianism is based ideologically on the very premise of male oppression: the dynamic of sexual intercourse. ... Because lesbianism involves role-playing and, more important, because it is based on the primary assumption of male oppression, that is, sex, lesbianism reinforces the sex class system. ... The price of self-respect for oppressed people is to adopt the role of the Oppressor, and, thus, ultimately, toward oneself. Lesbians, in that one paradoxical sense, become their own Oppressors.” (Amazon Odyssey 85-88)

The comparison of lesbianism to male supremacy was, of course, nothing new to lesbians, though perhaps early lesbian feminists were dismayed to hear it from women who insisted on the primacy of women’s commitments to one another. In essence, Atkinson’s portray attempted to write lesbianism out of the women’s movement: lesbians were, by her description, men rather than women--if not in actuality then certainly in behavior, mind-set, and social outlook. And as ‘men,’ lesbians were less than welcome in a ‘woman’s’ movement.

[...]

In May 1970, a newly formed lesbian-feminist group, the Lavender Menace, chose the Second Congress to Unite Women as the place to confront the women’s movement on its own homophobia. As soon as the entertainment portion of the evening ended, the lights in the auditorium went out. When they were relit, nearly twenty women stood at the front, ‘Lavender Menace’ stenciled on their T-shirts. They preempted the rest of the evening’s activities and proceeded to facilitate a speak-out and discussion on homophobia in feminism. Though they had placed women sympathetic to their action in the audience, these ‘plants’ were unnecessary; when the Menace opened the microphone and asked women to come froward to speak, dozens thronged to the stage. It was at this action that then little-known author Kate Millett declared her alliance with lesbians and spoke of her own bisexuality. At the same time, unknown to members of Lavender Menace, three lesbian groups from California held panels at the Second Congress meetings. Lesbians thus began to demand the recognition of their presence and work within women’s liberation (Abbot and Love 113-16).

Lavender Menace’s impact reached far beyond the congress, however. In preparation for the congress and during its aftermath, the Menace-later renamed Radicalesbians--wrote and widely distributed ‘Woman Identified Woman,’ their position paper on lesbianism. The essay contained five basic sections: a definition of homosexuality, an analysis of society’s derogatory views of lesbianism, the place of lesbianism within feminism, an analysis of women’s dependency upon men, and a call to all women to begin the creation of a new sense of what it meant to be a woman.[5]

As the title ‘Woman Identified Woman’ suggests, this discursive representation of lesbianism was in part an attempt to push the social definition of lesbianism away from sexuality and toward a constructed identity that had far more to do with a sociopolitical critique than it did with what one did in bed. Thus a lesbian was a woman who ‘acts in accordance with her inner compulsion to be a more complete and freer human being than her society ... cares to allow her. ... She is forced to evolve her own life pattern, often living much of her life alone, learning usually much earlier than her ‘straight’ ... sisters about the essential aloneness of life (which the myth of marriage obscures) and about the reality of illusions’ (Radicalesbians 240-41). This redefinition of lesbianism resonated on several levels within the early radical-feminist movement, in part because it effectively utilized characterizations of women’s experiences put forth by radical feminist groups themselves. When Radicalesbians described the typical lesbian as a woman who struggled to create herself outside social conventions of the feminine, they granted her the journey that most heterosexual feminists desired to undertake. Thus, lesbians were posited as not some outside evil force that tried to break up the feminist party but rather as women who, like everyone else, struggled for autonomy from patriarchal definitions of womanhood. The difference--if there was one--come in the implicit claims that lesbians were almost automatically compelled to start the process heterosexual women could begin only after a political or social awakening. In short, lesbians were rewritten as the pioneers of the feminist community.

The concept of lesbians as the pioneers of the feminist revolution was quickly adopted by many lesbian feminists in their analyses of gender and society. In the process, lesbian feminists often linked their critique of female socialization to the theory of sexism as the primary contradiction, a combination that had the rhetorical effect of positioning woman-identification as the crucial step in the eradication of all oppression. [...]

In part, Radicalesbians’ definition attempted to counter incessant emphasis by many feminists on lesbianism as solely sexual and therefore--like all sexuality--oppressive to women. And in this way lesbian feminism was to take an antagonistic stance to any overly sexualized portrayals of lesbianism, including those of butch-femme identification prior to the 1960s. But this willingness to mute sexuality in the hopes of appealing to heterosexual feminists also began a line of thought that was to become central to radical feminism: the view of the lesbian as the quintessential feminist.[7] Radicalesbians’ statement was thus an effective rhetorical strategy, for it placed the ‘well-adjusted’ lesbian as one who had successfully completed a journey to a freely chosen womanhood. And intentional or not, the wide acceptance of this definition opened the boundaries between heterosexual and lesbian women: if lesbianism was more than sex; was more, in fact, a method of liberation than it was a sexual orientation, then all women potentially could (and perhaps even should) become lesbians.

By the early 1970s, then, the burden of sexual proof placed on lesbians by works such as Atkinson’s ‘Lesbianism and Feminism’ was clearly turned back from lesbians onto heterosexual feminists themselves. Caught somewhat unprepared, heterosexual feminists found it necessary to defend their sexuality and found themselves vulnerable to the charge of collaboration with the oppressor if they attempted (or refused) to do so. That there was no immediate, organized rebuttal of this redefinition of heterosexuality was perhaps not surprising, even though the lack thereof made lesbian-feminist analyses seem generally correct. And any defense of heterosexual relationships without an effective challenge to lesbian feminists’ redefinitions--a challenge that was not forthcoming--could quickly be labeled both antifeminist and homophobic. Thus the overall response by heterosexual feminists usually fell along the lines of Ti-Grace Atkinson’s: shortly after Lavender Menace’s action and publication of ‘Woman Identified Woman,’ Atkinson reversed her earlier position on lesbianism and stated that ‘lesbianism has been a kind of code word for female resistance’ and that women who are ‘married to men ... are collaborators’ (Atkinson 131-32).[8]

[ohnotoomanyfandoms]

In a society in which men do not oppress women, and sexual expression is allowed to follow feelings, the categories of homosexuality and heterosexuality would disappear.

Radicalesbians, The Woman-Identified Woman, Gay Flames pamphlet, New York, 1970.

[rowark]

And since lesbian separatism is still on my mind, friendly reminder that Jean O'Leary, the founder of the Radicalesbians, who famously got up on stage to rant about drag queens, and specifically Sylvia Rivera, later looked back and regretted it.

Jean: Um, because I have since then, I mean, I’ve gone… During the Anita Bryant campaign, for instance, down in Dade County, Florida, I used to go down there and help them with the campaign. And I’d stay at the Windward hotel, which was just full of transvestites, transsexuals, wonderful, darling, lovable people that I got to know as people and got to know their lives and their stories. And who they are. Why they were. And, you know, just as you grow older, first of all, you learn more and you mellow in terms of your precision about what has to be exactly right and politically correct.

And right now I have… I like… It’s hard even to be tolerant for myself of exact political correctness. And I know that I went through it and I have to patience with the people that come up now that are going through the same thing, because it’s a process. It is a process.

———

Later Jean said to me, “How could I work to exclude transvestites and at the same time criticize the feminists who were doing their best back in those days to exclude lesbians?” She was right. (X)

And this is one of the big issues with trying to revive separatist and exclusionist ideology... not only was it unsuccessful in the past, it's also based on 50 year old ideas and understanding of society and how oppression functions.

They were railing against drag queens in a time where it was illegal to cross dress, and lesbians who did not dress traditionally feminine enough could be arrested. And they were rightfully pissed about it.

And also, friendly reminder... that comment about feminists excluding lesbians? That was the whole reason lesbians separated in the first place. Because neither liberal nor radical feminism focused on lesbian issues. They were fighting along with women who wanted to abolish marriage, when they didn't even have the right to marry. They were fighting for abortion rights, when it wasn't a high priority for them, personally. But when they tried to fight for lesbian rights, they were ignored. (Or worse: accused of hindering the movement.)

From The Woman-Identified Woman (the Radicalesbian manifesto):

Women in the movement have in most cases gone to great lengths to avoid discussion and confrontation with the issue of lesbianism. It puts people up-tight. They are hostile, evasive, or try to incorporate it into some ''broader issue. " They would rather not talk about it. If they have to, they try to dismiss it as a 'lavender herring. " But it is no side issue. It is absolutely essential to the success and fulfillment of the women's liberation movement that this issue be dealt with. As long as the label "dyke" can be used to frighten women into a less militant stand, keep her separate from her sisters, keep her from giving primacy to anything other than men and family-then to that extent she is controlled by the male culture.

So do not let terfs (and especially political lesbians) tell you that supporting trans rights is lesphobic. Because this is the part of history they ignore: the part where lesbians revolted against a gay liberation movement that excluded them, and a feminist movement that excluded them. Terfs do not get to set the parameters for lesbianism, when most of them aren't even a part of the queer community in the first place.

There is an entire lesbian history that they don't acknowledge because it doesn't fit the lesbian narrative they're peddling, but unfortunately, the side they picked is the one that defines "lesbian" as a woman who voluntarily gives up men, and attraction to women is not required.

(Case in point: the lesbian from this morning who felt that talking about lesbian sex is perverted 🙄)

[outweek30]

"People who do not preserve their history will shortly have someone else's," said Marty Robinson, quoting Lesbian Herstory Archives' founder Joan Nestle. With that statement, memories of times over 20 years ago came alive at "Revolution Recalled" at the Lesbian and Gay Community Center on Thursday, June 22 [1989], where veterans of the early gay and lesbian liberation struggle shared their experiences with both contemporaries and young activists. [...]

Martha Shelley, author and a co-founder of GLF and Radicalesbians told the group of 250 that recounted experience is the best history. For Shelley, that history began with the landmark lesbian group Daughters of Bilitis and the picketing of Independence Hall in Philadelphia "pleading for equal rights," an important step, she said, toward "splitting open the ’50s grey flannel suit mentality." She acknowledged the many others involved in the early lesbian and gay movement, for whom the first steps were the civil rights, anti-war, feminist and anti-imperialist struggles.

[...] She spoke of the early organizing efforts in Stonewall's aftermath, such as Mattachine's Town Hall meeting, the early march through the Village and rally in Washington Square, and the meeting at Alternate U, where [the Gay Liberation Front (GLF)] was born. Eschewed by much of the left, GLF also was avoided, by many lesbians and gay men still stinging from the anti-homosexual witch hunt of the McCarthy period.

Crediting GLF for saving her life, Shelley waxed nostalgic about that group's dances at Alternate U. (where beer was 50 cents as opposed to $2 dollars in mafia-run bars), the role of its newspaper Come Out, and its many coalition attempts including fundraising for the Black Panthers and helping the Young Lords in building occupation. Shelley also spoke of GLF's dissolution, as various factions left for various reasons: people of color forming their own groups in response to issues of racism, "serious socialists" becoming the Red Butterfly cell, women leaving in response to needs around sexism. In reflection, Shelley called upon the community to remember "those people who didn't make it," whether by AIDS, murder, suicide, or "therapists."

At the time of early liberationist foment, Barbara Love was a CBS executive and, a reluctant radical in a milieu where the bars and the radical groups were the "only game in town." Co-author of Sappho Was a Right on Woman and co-founder of Identity House and the National Gay Task Force (now National Lesbian and Gay Task Force), 'he was introduced to lesbian liberation through the National Organization for Women (NOW) where "that issue" was whispered about until Rita Mae Brown came in with her mini-skirt and Phi Beta Kappa pin and "actually mentioned the world 'lesbian' out loud." Love spoke of the efforts she and Sappho co-author Sidney Abbott made in getting NOW's 400,000 members to work on lesbian issues. The fight in NOW was "devastating," she said, describing the "lavender menace" purge of lesbians from leadership in that organization. Such struggles continued in efforts to gain gender parity at NGTF.

A former vice president of [Gay Activists Alliance (GAA)], co-founder of NGTF and now at the New York City Commission on the Status of Women, Ginny Vida told of her experience with the Women's Subcommittee of GAA (which later became Lesbian Feminist Liberation) where there was tension with the gay men, "but also wonderful moments of working together." One of that subcommittee's first efforts was an International Lesbian Film Festival, in which Vida credited Vito Russo with helping obtain many of the films. Vida also recounted the major victory for the early movement when, in December 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of disorders.

The police raid of an afterhours bar called the Snake Pit in the early 70s was remembered by Jim Owles, a co-founder of the GAA and the first president of that organization. An Argentinian gay man arrested in the raid, fearing deportation based on his homosexuality, jumped out a window of the 6th precinct and was impaled on the fence below. Leaflets mimeographed at Marty Robinson's apartment which called for a demonstration said: "that person could have been anyone of us." The demonstrators went first to St. Vincent's where the man was hospitalized, proceeding to the 6th precinct "to give them hell," Owles told those gathered.

— Jon David Aloisi-Nalley, “Stonewall-Era Activists Speak Out,” OutWeek Magazine No. 3, July 10, 1989, p. 24.

[gender-has-failed-us]

Women resist relating on all levels to other women who will reflect their own oppression, their own secondary status, their own self-hate. For to confront another woman is finally to confront one's self—the self we have gone to such lengths to avoid.

Radicalesbians, “The Woman-Identified Woman” (1970)