A part and apart: Lesbian and straight feminist activists negotiate identity in a second-wave organization

Journal of the History of Sexuality

Volumn 16, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 95-113

  Gilmore, Stephanie ^a   Kaminski, Elizabeth ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; FEMALE; GENDER IDENTITY; HETEROSEXUALITY; HISTORY; HUMAN; HUMAN RELATION; LAW; LEGAL ASPECT; LESBIAN; MARRIAGE; ORGANIZATION; PHYSIOLOGY; POLICY; POLITICS; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; PUBLIC OPINION; SOCIAL CHANGE; UNITED STATES; WOMEN'S HEALTH; WOMEN'S RIGHTS;

CULTURE; FEMALE; GENDER IDENTITY; HETEROSEXUALITY; HISTORY, 21ST CENTURY; HOMOSEXUALITY, FEMALE; HUMANS; INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS; LEGISLATION AS TOPIC; MARRIAGE; ORGANIZATIONS; POLITICS; PUBLIC OPINION; PUBLIC POLICY; SOCIAL CHANGE; UNITED STATES; WOMEN; WOMEN'S HEALTH; WOMEN'S RIGHTS; WOMEN, WORKING;

EID: 63249128663     PISSN: 10434070     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/sex.2007.0038     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. Christopher Curtis, "In U.S., Gays Try to Wed on Valentine's Day," PlanetOut Network, 15 February 2005; David Crary, "Activists Set to Rally on Valentine's Day," Hartford Courant, 12 February 2005.
2. www.now.org.
3. Stephanie Gilmore, "The Dynamics of Second-Wave Feminist Activism in Memphis, 1971-1982: Rethinking the Liberal/Radical Divide," NWSA Journal 15 (2003): 94-117;
4. Stephanie Gilmore, "Rethinking the Liberal/Radical Divide: The National Organization for Women in Memphis, Columbus, and San Francisco, 1971-1982," Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 2005;
5. Maryann Barakso, Governing NOW: Grassroots Activism in the National Organization for Women (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004);
6. and Sara Evans, Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century's End (New York: Free Press, 2003).
7. Evans, Tidal Wave, 51.
8. Mary Bernstein, "Celebration and Suppression: Strategic Uses of Identity by the Lesbian and Gay Movement," American Journal of Sociology 103 (1997): 531-65; Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity (New York: Blackwell, 1997);
9. Alberto Melucci, Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989);
10. Aldon Morris, Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Free Press, 1984);
11. Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor, "Forging Feminist Identity in an International Movement: A Collective Identity Approach to Twentieth-Century Feminism," Signs 24 (1999): 363-86;
12. Sheldon Stryker, Timothy Owens, and Robert White, eds., Self, Identity, and Social Movements (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000);
13. and Verta Taylor and Nancy Whittier, "Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities: Lesbian Feminist Mobilization," in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, ed. Aldon Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), 104-30.
14. Taylor and Whittier, "Collective Identity," 105.
15. On gay and lesbian movements see Steve Valocchi, "The Class-Inflected Nature of Gay Identity," Social Problems 46 (1999): 207-24;
16. Joshua Gamson, "Must Identity Movements Self-Destruct? A Queer Dilemma," in Queer Theory/Sociology, ed. Steven Seidman (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996);
17. and Arlene Stein, Sex and Sensibility: Stories of a Lesbian Generation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). On feminist movement identity see Stephanie Gilmore, ed., Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007); Jo Reger, "Organizational Dynamics and the Construction of Multiple Feminist Identities in the National Organization for Women," Gender and Society 16 (2002): 710-27;
18. Rupp and Taylor, "Forging Feminist Identity"; Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of the International Women's Movement (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997);
19. Taylor and Whittier, "Collective Identity"; and Carol Giardina, "The Making of the Women's Liberation Movement, 1953-1970," Ph.D. dissertation, City University of New York, 2004. On the Christian Right see, for example, Kimberly Dugan, The Struggle over Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Lives: Facing off in Cincinnati (New York: Routledge, 2005). On civil rights movement activism see Morris, Origins of the Civil Rights Movement; Charles Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995);
20. and Lori G. Waite, "Divided Consciousness: The Impact of Black Elite Consciousness on the 1966 Chicago Freedom Movement," in Oppositional Consciousness: The Subjective Roots of Social Protest, ed. Jane Mansbridge and Aldon Morris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
21. See Deborah Gould, "Rock the Boat, Don't Rock the Boat, Baby: Ambivalence and the Emergence of Militant AIDS Activism," in Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements, ed. Jeffrey Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 135-57;
22. and Verta Taylor, Rock-a-by Baby: Feminism, Self-Help, and Postpartum Depression (New York: Routledge, 1996).
23. Gamson, "Must Identity Movements Self-Destruct?"
24. Bernstein, "Celebration and Suppression."
25. See, for example, Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982);
26. Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement; Stein, Sex and Sensibility; and Waite, "Divided Consciousness."
27. Jo Reger, "More than One Feminism: Organizational Structure and the Construction of Collective Identity," in Social Movements, ed. David Meyer, Nancy Whittier, and Belinda Robnett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
28. Barakso, Governing NOW.
29. Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom, 119.
30. Barakso, Governing NOW; Jane Mansbridge, Why We Lost the ERA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986);
31. Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New Right (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002);
32. and Godfrey Hodgson, The World Turned Right Side Up: A History of Conservative Ascendancy in America (New York: Mariner Books, 1996).
33. On welfare and NOW see Marisa Chappell, "Rethinking Women's Politics in the 1970s: The League of Women Voters and the National Organization for Women Confront Poverty," Journal of Women's History 13 (2002): 155-79.
34. Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).
35. Kay Clarenbach to Board of Directors, 1967, quoted in Barakso, Governing NOW, 82.
36. Ibid., 86.
37. Marcia G. Gallo, Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2006).
38. Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, interview with authors, 21 March 2004. See also No Secret Anymore: The Times of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, DVD, directed by Joan E. Biren (Moonforce Media and Woman Vision, 2005).
39. We agree with other scholars who locate "gay liberation" prior to the Stonewall riots of 1969, many of whom also draw out earlier connections between homophile and gay liberation organizations and feminist ones.
40. See Gallo, Different Daughters; Nan Alamilla Boyd, Wide Open Town: A Queer History of San Francisco before 1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004);
41. Verta Taylor, Elizabeth Kaminski, and Kimberly Dugan, "From the Bowery to the Castro: Communities, Identities, and Movements," in Handbook of Lesbian and Gay Studies, ed. Diane Richardson and Steven Seidman (London: Sage Publications, 2002), 99-114; No Secret Anymore; and Gay Pioneers, DVD, directed by Glenn Holsten (Equality Forum, 2004).
42. Rita Mae Brown, "The Outrageous Acts of Rita Mae Brown," Ms. July/August 1995; and Karla Jay, Tales of the Lavender Menace: A Story of Liberation (New York: Basic Books, 1999).
43. Jay, Tales of the Lavender Menace.
44. Radicalesbians, "The Woman-Identified-Woman" (1970), reprinted in Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader, ed. Barbara A. Crow (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 233-37.
45. Anne Valk, "Living the Feminist Lifestyle: The Intersection of Theory and Action in a Lesbian Feminist Collective," Feminist Studies 28 (2002): 271-301.
46. Ibid.; see also Ara Wilson, "1970s Lesbian Feminism," available online at http://womens-studies.osu.edu/araw/1970slf.htm; and Stephanie Gilmore and Anne Collinson, "Lesbian Feminism," in Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History, ed. Marc Stein, 3 vols. (New York: Gale, 2005), 1:386-87.
47. Email correspondence between Stephanie Gilmore and Cynthia Harrison, 16 March 2002.
48. Elizabeth Armstrong, Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco, 1950-1994 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002);
49. and John D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
50. Betty Friedan to chapter presidents and regional officers, 12 April 1970, series II, section B, "Board Mailings: 1967-1994," National NOW Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University (hereafter NOW Papers).
51. Letter in authors' possession.
52. Letter in authors' possession.
53. Brown, "The Outrageous Acts."
54. In 1971 Clarenbach rescinded her vehement opposition to lesbian activists in NOW. See interview with Kathryn Clarenbach, 17 November 1987, Oral History Project, University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives. Thanks to Kathleen Laughlin for informing us of this source.
55. Aileen Hernandez, press release, 17 December 1970, in "Feminist History Email Archive," ed. David Dinsmore, available on the web at http://www.vfa.us/Dinsmore.htm#C%20Section.
56. Ibid.
57. Betty Friedan, "Up from the Kitchen Floor," New York Times Magazine, 4 March 1973.
58. NOW Resolution on Lesbian Rights, 1971, copy located in series III, section B, "Annual Conferences," NOW Papers.
59. Myra Marx Ferree and Beth B. Hess, Controversy and Coalition: The New Feminist Movement across Four Decades of Change, 4th ed. (New York: Routledge, 2000).
60. Letter to L.A. NOW chapter, 1971, in Dinsmore, "Feminist History Email Archive."
61. Memphis NOW newsletter, April 1971, Memphis NOW Papers, Special Collections, Ned R. McWherter Library, University of Memphis, Tennessee (hereafter Memphis NOW Papers).
62. Ibid.
63. Daneel Buring, Lesbian and Gay Memphis: Building Communities behind the Magnolia Curtain (New York: Garland, 1997); Carryin' on in the Lesbian and Gay South, ed. John Howard (New York: New York University Press, 1997);
64. John Howard, Men Like That: A Southern Queer History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001);
65. and James Sears, Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001).
66. Memphis NOW newsletter, August 1972, Memphis NOW Papers.
67. Buring, Lesbian and Gay Memphis, 82.
68. Ibid., esp. 209-28; on the first gay pride parade see also Dominic Jesse, "On the Sidelines: The Annual Gay Pride Parade Tries to Represent the Gay Community," Memphis Flyer, 18-24 June 1998, available on the web at http://www.memphisflyer.com/backissues/issue487/.
69. Buring, Lesbian and Gay Memphis, esp. 155-56; and Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Penguin, 1991).
70. Betty Sullivan, interview with Stephanie Gilmore, 1997.
71. Buring, Lesbian and Gay Memphis, 156.
72. Ibid., 165.
73. Lynda Dolbi, interview with Stephanie Gilmore, 1997.
74. Buring, Lesbian and Gay Memphis, 167.
75. Paula Casey and Karen Shea, interview with Stephanie Gilmore, 1997.
76. Nancy Whittier, Feminist Generations: The Persistence of the Radical Women's Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995).
77. Gretchen Dygert, interview with Stephanie Gilmore, 2003.
78. The first appearance of a lesbian task force in Columbus NOW was in the May 1985 chapter newsletter. See Columbus NOW newsletter, May 1985, Columbus NOW Papers, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.
79. Whittier, Feminist Generations; see also Dygert interview with Gilmore.
80. Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, interview with authors, April 2002.
81. Newsletters of Golden Gate NOW chapter in the mid-1970s, from the Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon Papers, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society, San Francisco, California.
82. Gilmore, "The Dynamics of Feminist Activism."
83. Gilmore, "Rethinking the Liberal/Radical Divide."
84. Gilmore, "The Dynamics of Feminist Activism"; Reger, "Organizational Dynamics"; and Suzanne Staggenborg, "The Survival of the Women's Movement: Turnover and Continuity in Bloomington, Indiana," Mobilization 1 (1998): 143-58.
85. Valk, "Living the Feminist Lifestyle."