Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers (66 page)

13
. New England lesbians discussed in Skiba, pp. 2–5 and in paper presentation by Mirtha Quintanales et al., Berkshire History of Women Conference, Wellesley College, Mass., June 20, 1987. Bluff discussed in Julia Penelope, “Whose Past Are We Reclaiming?,”
Common Lives/Lesbian Lives
(Autumn 1984), 13:16. Greenwich Village discussed in Maida Tilchen and Helen Weinstock, “Letters from My Aunt,”
Gay Community News
(July 12, 1980), 7(5):8.

14
. Personal interview with Toni, age 59, Kansas City, Mo., October 16, 1988.

15
. Joan Nestle, “Butch/Fern Relationships: Sexual Courage in the 1950s,”
Heresies: Sex Issue
(1981), 12(3)121–24, and personal interview with Joan Nestle, New York, October 6, 1987. Judy Grahn,
Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), pp. 30–31, 47. See also Madeline Davis and Elizabeth Kennedy, “Oral History and the Study of Sexuality in the Lesbian Community: Buffalo, NY, 1940–1960,” in Martin Duberman et al., eds.,
Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past
(New York: New American Library, 1989), pp. 426–40.

16
. On being flipped among white lesbians: Mushroom, p. 42. Penelope, p. 26; personal interview with Suzanne, age 39, Boston, Mass., June 16, 1987. Being flipped among black lesbians discussed in Lorde, p. 140 and Ethel Sawyer, “A Study of a Public Lesbian Community,” unpublished M.A. thesis, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo, 1965. In women’s prisons during the 1950s various other terms were used to describe being flipped. At the Federal Reformatory for women at Alderson, West Virginia, a butch who became a femme was said to have “dropped the belt.” At Frontera it was said she “gave up the works.” See Rose Giallombardo,
Society of Women
(New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1966).

17
. Laurajean Ermayne, “My Friend the Night”
Vice Versa,
October 1947, pp. 11–12. Joan Nestle, “The Fern Question, or We Will Not Go Away,” lecture notes for conference, “The Scholar and the Feminist: Toward a Politics of Sexuality,” Barnard College, New York, April 24, 1982.

18
. Personal interview with J. C, Houston, Tex., March 26, 1988. Personal interview with Ann, cited above. Judy Grahn also remembers that in Washington, D.C., some women in the bars would be femme one night and butch the next: Grahn, p. 156.

19
. Personal interview with Lucia, age 42, San Francisco, August 2, 1988.

20
. Penelope, 23.

21
. Laurajean Ermayne, “Radclyffe Hall,”
Vice Versa,
November 1947. In her own life the strict role division between Hall and her primary partner, Una Troubridge, seems to have faded as their years together passed. While Troubridge appeared traditionally feminine at the beginning of their relationship, later photographs show her to be increasingly less so. The two women appeared often in public in men’s jackets and ties. After Hall’s death, Troubridge wore exclusively men’s clothes. See Richard Ormrod,
Una Troubridge: The Friend of Radclyffe Hall
(New York: Carroll and Graf, 1985). With regard to the influence of
The Well of Loneliness
see Blanche Weissen Cook, “Women Alone Stir My Imagination,”
Signs
(1979), 4:718–39. See also Rebecca O’Rourke,
Reflecting on the Well of Loneliness
(London: Routledge, 1989).

22
. John D’Emilio as respondent on panel, “Love and Friendship in Lesbian Bar Communities of the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s,” Berkshire History of Women Conference, Wellesley College, Mass., June 19, 1987.

23
. Newton.

24
. Jon Bradshaw,
Dreams That Money Can Buy: The Tragic Life of Libby Holman
(New York: William Morrow, 1985).

25
. Bradshaw; Milt Machlin,
Libby
(New York: Tower, 1980).

26
. Denis Brian,
Tallulah, Darling
(New York: Macmillan, 1980), pp. 34, 67–68; Bradshaw, p. 84.

27
. Bradshaw, pp. 260–61, 310.

28
. George Wickes,
The Amazon of Letters: The Life and Loves of Natalie Barney
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976), p. 44.

29
. Elisabeth Craigin,
Either Is Love
(New York: Harcourt, 1937), pp. 68–70. Diana Fredricks,
Diana: A Strange Autobiography
(New York: Dial, 1939), pp. 72–73.

30
. Lisa Ben, “Protest,”
Vice Versa,
January 1948, p. 14. In later writings Lisa Ben acknowledged the importance of butch/femme in her own social group. For example, she wrote a “gay parody” of “Hello, Young Lovers” with the line: “All you cute butches lined up at the bar,/ I’ve had a love like you,” Leland Moss, “Interview with Lisa Ben,”
Gaysweek,
January 23, 1978, pp. 14–16.

31
. “The President’s Message,”
The Ladder
(November 1956), 1(2): 3. A 1958 DOB questionnaire indicated that the lesbian readership of
The Ladder
was solidly middle- to upper-middle class in terms of education, occupation, property ownership, and civic activities such as voting:
The Ladder
(September 1959), 3(12):4–32. The appeal to homosexuals to blend in had some resurgence at the end of the 1980s, which may be a harbinger of more conservative times: see Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen,
After the Ball
(New York: Doubleday, 1989).

32
. “Readers Respond,”
The Ladder
(October 1958), 3(1):30.

33
. Suzanne Prosin, “The Concept of the Lesbian: A Minority in Reverse,”
The Ladder
(July 1962), 6(10):5–22.

34
. Dinner parties described in personal interview with Mildred, age 58, Berkeley, Calif, August 10, 1987.

35
. Personal interview with Jane, age 54, Los Angeles, April 7, 1987.

36
. Interview with two women who lived through the McCarthy era, in Sasha Gregory Lewis,
Sunday’s Women: A Report on Lesbian Life Today
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), pp. 58–59 and written communication from Nora, age 67, Los Angeles, March 6, 1988.

37
. Personal interview with Jeanette, age 63, San Francisco, August 11, 1987.

38
. Personal interview with Betty, age 66, Omaha, Neb., October 11, 1988.

39
. Sten Russell in
One,
Febuary 1954, pp. 18–19. Personal interview with Jane, age 54, Los Angeles, April 7, 1987. Barbara Gittings interview, in Kay Tobin and Randy Wicker, eds.,
The Gay Crusaders
(1972; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975), p. 209.

40
. Regarding violence against lesbians see interviews with Greenwich Village lesbians from the 1950s in video,
Neighborhood Voices,
producer Amber Hollibaugh, 1985. Typescript of interview with Sandy K., New York Lesbian Herstory Archives, file: 1950s. William Fitzgerald, “Psuedo-Heterosexuality in Prison and Out: A Study of the Lower Lower Class Black Lesbian,” doctoral diss., City University of New York, 1977, p. 121.

41
. Personal interview with Jackie, age 60, San Francisco, August 11, 1987.

42
. Marlin Prentiss, “The Feminine Viewpoint,”
One
(April 1955), 3(4): 37–40.

43
. Julie Smith, “The Lesbian’s Story: How Does Girl Meet Girl?,”
San Francisco Chronicle,
July 1, 1969, p. 17.

8. “Not a Public Relations Movement”

1
.  History of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee in John Lauritsen and David Thorstad,
The Early Homosexual Rights Movement, 1864–1935
(New York: Times Change Press, 1974), and Lillian Faderman and Brigitte Eriksson,
Lesbians in Germany: 1890–1920
(Tallahassee, Fla: Naiad Press, 1990).

2
.  Editorial, “The Homosexual Vote,”
The Ladder
(July 1960), 4(10):4–5.

3
.  Mattachine’s early years are discussed in John D’Emilio,
Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the U.S., 1940–1970
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). Personal interview with Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, San Francisco, August 14, 1987. DOB’s early years are also recorded in the organization’s magazine,
The Ladder.

4
.  Personal interview with Barbara Gittings, Philadelphia, October 7, 1987. Convention discussed by Del Martin, panel: “Daughters of Bilitis: The First National Lesbian Organization,” Berkshire History of Women Conference, Wellesley College, Mass., June 19, 1987.

5
.  Picket signs in Andrea Weiss and Greta Schiller,
Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community
(Tallahassee, Fla: Naiad Press, 1988). Personal interview with Barbara Gittings, cited above.

6
.  
New York Times
(Western Edition), December 27, 1963. Although media coverage on homosexuality increased greatly during the mid-1960s, it was not always positive or neutral. For example,
Time
Magazine ran an essay on homosexuality calling for more tolerance but admonishing that homosexuality deserves “no fake status as minority martyrdom … and, above all, no pretense that it is anything but a pernicious sickness”: “The Homosexuals,”
Time,
June 21, 1966, pp. 40–41. DOB convention discussed in Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon,
Lesbian/ Woman
(New York: Bantam, 1972), p. 224. Statistics from Edwin M. Schur,
Crimes Without Victims: Deviant Behavior and Public Policy
(Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), p. 97.

7
.  Personal interview with Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, cited above. See also “The Church and the Homosexual: A New Rapport,”
The Ladder,
September 1964, pp. 9–13.

8
.  New York City Civil Service Commission action reported in
New York Times,
January 7, 1967, p. 1. NACHO discussed in D’Emilio, pp. 197–99. Rita Mae Brown,
Plain Brown Rapper
(Oakland, Calif: Diana Press, 1976). Police discussed in Roxanne Thayer Sweet, “Political and Social Action in Homophile Organziations,” doctoral diss. University of California, Berkeley, 1968.

9
.  See, e.g., Lee Ebreo, “A Homosexual Ghetto?,”
The Ladder
(Dec. 1965), 10(3)18; “U.S. Homophile Movement Gains National Strength,”
The Ladder
(April 1966), 10(7):4–5; Barbara Grier (Marilyn Barrow), “The Least of These,”
The Ladder,
October/November 1968, pp. 30–33; and Martha Shelley, “Readers Respond,”
The Ladder,
April/ May 1969, pp. 42–3.

10
. Editorial, “A Suggested Policy: Confrontation and Implementation,”
Homophile Action League Newletter,
1:4 (Feb. 1969), pp. 1–2.

11
. 
New York Times,
June 29, 1969, p. 33. The second night of riots received similarly unexcited coverage in the
New York Times:
“Police Again Rout ‘Village’ Youths,” June 30, 1969, p. 22. Papers such as the
Village Voice
were more perceptive: see July 3, 1969, p. 1. See also New York Mattachine
Newsletter,
July 1969, pp. 21–25 and August 1969, pp. 1–6. The newsletter decribed the riots, in which many gay male transvestites participated, in camp terms such as “the hairpin drop heard round the world.”