Here come the lesbians, here come the leaping lesbians...

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by Anya/Georgia

I thought given both threads, a little herstory might give perspective. For those of us that already lived through this in the second wave of feminism-it really just is the same issue of inclusion:

"In 1969, National Organization for Women president Betty Friedan had referred to growing lesbian visibility as a "lavender menace" and fired openly lesbian newsletter editor Rita Mae Brown. Furthermore, in 1970 Betty Friedan engineered the expulsion of lesbians, including local president Ivy Bottini, from NOW's New York chapter. In 1970, at the Congress to Unite Women, on the first evening when all four hundred feminists were assembeled in the auditorium, the lights were shut off, and when they were turned on again twenty women wearing t-shirts that read "Lavender Menace" stood at the front of the room, facing the audience. One of the women then read their group's paper "The Woman-Identified Woman", which was the first major lesbian feminist statement. The group, who later named themselves "Radicalesbians", were among the first to challenge the heterosexism of heterosexual feminists and to describe lesbian experience in positive terms."

i love what the Radicalesbians did for us, but i admit to being disturbed when reading about political lesbianism (not to say the two are related!!!!), which taught that women should choose to be lesbian as a political statement. I kinda wish that hadn't happened

i feel like that pholosophy inadvertently got in the way of getting the message out that for many (most? all?) of us it is not a choice

and i feel like this kind of philosophy was also at work throughout the years i spent denying my attraction to butches, as it seemed expected that since i was choosing to be with a woman, i should choose one who fit the model of feminist political correctness ascendant in late 80s Texas.