City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

Odd girls and twilight lovers, a history of lesbian life in twentieth-century America, Lillian Faderman

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Odd girls and twilight lovers

bibliography

22906565

Lillian Faderman

Between men--between women : lesbian, gay and bisexual studies

a history of lesbian life in twentieth-century America

This compelling story of lesbian life in the twentieth century traces the evolution of lesbian identity and subcultures from the early years of the century--when career opportunities first enabled women to support themselves and spend their lives in "romantic friendships" with other women--to the diversity of today's life styles. Faderman uses journals, unpublished manuscripts, songs, news accounts, novels, medical literature, and numerous personal interviews with lesbians of all races, ages, and classes, to uncover and relate this often surprising narrative of lesbian life in America. Lesbian identity could emerge, Faderman maintains, only during that time, with the sexual freedom of the 1920s and the 1960s, as well as the social freedom made possible by World War II, the education of women, and the civil rights and women's movements. The term "lesbian" did not become current until the late nineteenth century, when European sexologists began to explore female same-sex loving. Where close relationships between women had once been accepted--even encouraged--the sexologists stigmatized same-sex pairing as deviant, but at the same time fostered a lesbian consciousness which was necessary before lesbian communities could be formed. This book tells how women who accepted the label "lesbian" altered the sexologists' definitions, creating identities and ideologies for themselves.--Adapted from book jacket

"The loves of women for each other" : "romantic friends" in the twentieth century -- A worm in the bud : the early sexologists and love between women -- Lesbian chic: experimentation and repression in the 1920s -- Wastelands and oases: the 1930s -- "Naked amazons and queer damozels" : World War II and its aftermath -- The love that dares not speak its name : McCarthyism and its legacy -- Butches, femmes, and kikis : creating lesbian subcultures in the 1950s and '60s -- "Not a public relations movement" : lesbian revolutions in the 1960s through '70s -- Lesbian Nation : creating a women-identified-women community in the 1970s -- Lesbian sex wars in the 1980s -- From tower of Babel to community: lesbian life in the 1980s -- Epilogue: Social constructions and the metamorphoses of love between women