Category: 1970s
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Flamboyance and Fortitude: Butch-Femme Relationships in 2024
Butch-Femme relationships play an important role in lesbian history. What does the Butch-Femme relationship mean today?
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Why lesbian separatism is not escapist
There is a false narrative in the feminist community that lesbian separatism is escapist. There are legitimate criticisms–utopianism, rigidity, alienation–but the belief that lesbian separatism is escapism, running away into the bush, leaving the rest of womankind behind to fend for themselves against patriarchy, seems to stick the most. Lesbian separatism is meaningful lesbian-centred action.…
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Is lesbian separatism possible in 2023?
Q&A style posts on LesbianHerstory.com are an opportunity for readers to ask questions that serve as prompting topics for LH to write about. Questions can be advice-based, about our hot takes, asking whether we’ll cover a certain event or figure from history, or about lesbian news and media – you name it. Send your questions/prompts…
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Boston Marriages and the Language of Lesbian Relationships
Maybe it was two women in your history textbook. Maybe it was your unmarried great aunt and her live-in ‘best friend’. We are all familiar with the story: two women are designated close friends by historians, family members and society, despite the pair’s decision to unite and entwine their lives like any marriage between a…
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Make Feminism Venomous Again: first Roe v. Wade, next lesbian and gay rights
On the 24th of June, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion just short of the 50th anniversary of Roe v Wade. As of April 7, 2022, of the 9 justices of the Supreme Court, 6 were appointed by a Republican president and 3 were appointed by a Democratic president. WE…
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How Should We Tell the Stories of “Bad” Lesbians from History in a Culture of Us vs. Them?
How do we write on complex, even harmful, lesbians from history in the age of “us vs. them”? How do we present the facts in a way that doesn’t omit the person or the truth? Is writing on a person from history ever objective, considering the historian has their own interests, motives and interpretations, and…
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Lesbian Feminist Spirituality of the 1970s
One of my favorite lesbian stereotypes is our love for astrology. One would be hard pressed to find a lesbian without their sun sign in their social media bios, let alone their entire star chart. Tarot, crystals, and witchcraft just seem so inherently lesbian. So how did the New Age and lesbianism become linked? For…
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The Lesbian Pinball: Gay Liberation vs Women’s Liberation
Lesbians are pulled between solidarity with gay men, because of homophobia, and straight women, because of misogyny. We have prioritised solidarity with gay men or straight women at different points in history, depending on the contextual concerns.