"That Women Could Matter": Building Lesbian Feminism in California, 1955-1982.

Abstract

This project excavates a world of lesbian feminist activity that functioned as a distinct social movement while also contributing the broader women’s movement through shared goals of feminist liberation. Tracing the activism of San Francisco Bay Area lesbians exposes a vibrant site of movement-building. Beginning in 1969 and running into the early 1980s, lesbian feminists organized for revolution from the position that separating from men and male systems of power was the key to ending patriarchal oppression. Their activity grew out of the lesbian activism in the homophile movement of the 1950s and 1960s, when most activist lesbians opted to organize separately from gay men. During three distinct movement phases, lesbian feminists redefined women’s sexuality, built a far-reaching network known as Lesbian Nation, and pushed (straight) feminism to grapple with barriers to movement longevity. The Daughters of Bilitis, while not explicitly feminist identified, laid a foundation of separatist organizing from which lesbian feminism emerged. Gay Women’s Liberation defined a new public lesbian identity that emphasized prioritizing women above else, relying upon its multiclass and multiracial composition to craft their radical grassroots vision. Women’s bookstores demonstrated that lesbian separatism did not mean disengagement from (straight) feminism. Bookstores functioned as intimate sites of Lesbian Nation and reflected the woman-identified belief that women need not engage with the state to create revolution. Olivia Records emerged out of the movement’s national network and spread the vision of woman-identification to its furthest possible reaches. As a site of debate for feminist values at the end of the seventies, the record label exposed how (straight) women continued to challenge the legitimacy of lesbians as feminist actors even as lesbians proved central to movement survival. Together, these entities shaped San Francisco Bay Area lesbian feminism, supported the region’s thriving women’s community, and served as a vital hub of a national lesbian movement that constructed a public lesbianism upon which contemporary queer women continue to build.