Lesbian / Woman

By Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon

A landmark book in 20th century queer civil rights and classic lesbian feminist work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Park Hudson Press
• Release date: Jul 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215023747

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NOTES ON THE DIGITAL EDITION

This digital edition is presented by Park Hudson Press in an effort to share the history and culture of Oklahoma. While as true as possible to the original content, the original text may have been edited for content and format. The ideas and viewpoints expressed in the text are those of the author and not necessarily those of Park Hudson Press or the Metropolitan Library System. Some material may represent viewpoints of an earlier time that are not appropriate today.

To the Daughters of Bilitis—

and to all the other daughters throughout the world

who are struggling with their identity

as Lesbian/Woman

Introduction

A Lesbian is a woman whose primary erotic, psychological, emotional and social interest is in a member of her own sex, even though that interest may not be overtly expressed. At a time when women, the forgotten sex, are voicing their rage and demanding their personhood, it is fitting that a book on the Lesbian be written. Like her heterosexual sister, the Lesbian has been downtrodden, but doubly so: first, because she is a woman, and second, because she is a Lesbian.

Nonfiction books and articles are almost exclusively devoted to the male homosexual, with perhaps a chapter on or incidental mention of the Lesbian. The implication is either that what is said applies equally to female homosexuals or that the Lesbian, because she is a woman, is just not that important. It is true that the male homosexual and the Lesbian have many common concerns, and that her numbers probably equal that of the male—one in every ten women. It must be noted, however, that the Lesbian differs greatly from the male homosexual in attitudes, problems and life styles.

The lack of research and scientific knowledge on the Lesbian is due to a number of factors. By nature the Lesbian is a chameleon creature, having learned for her own protection to cover up. She is, therefore, not easily studied. Most researchers are men who are interested primarily in the enigma of male homosexuality. They are less likely to take the female homosexual seriously, and when they do decide to conduct a study on Lesbians, they find a great resistance from these women, because they are men. Women researchers (still very rare because of discrimination against women) who might meet with less reluctance from Lesbians are not likely to go into this particular field lest they themselves become suspect to their academic colleagues.

At the 1962 convention of the Daughters of Bilitis, an internationally known Lesbian organization, a panel discussion on Lesbian literature led to a debate between Jess Stearn and Tracy Laing, book reviewer, as to who could write the definitive book about the Lesbian—a man or a woman. Tracy said that what was needed was qualified writers who were Lesbians, that budding authors were often told to write what you know about. Jess took the position that as a man he could be more objective because of his detachment. But even Jess would have to admit he was not altogether detached in his book, which was published subsequent to the debate. In the back of his heterosexual head there was always the unsaid thought, Oh, what a waste, when he was forced to the realization that these women, many of whom he found attractive, were not attracted to him or to other men.

There have been other debates within the homosexual community as to the objectivity or bias of research when conducted by presumed heterosexuals. But where do the scientists gather their data? From whom? How do they measure the thoughts, feelings and attitudes of their subjects? Experience indicates that the questions are made up generally by heterosexuals and asked of homosexuals who very often find them irrelevant to their particular life style. The questions, for the most part, are unanswerable by the required yes or no or multiple choice, and their only virtue is that they are easily computerized into instant (misleading) statistics.

It is our contention that there can be no definitive book on the Lesbian, nor one which is wholly objective. We do feel, however, that the experience of Lesbians, expressed in their own terms and in the context of their own self awareness, has merit in and of itself. It is through such insights into others that understanding and acceptance of human beings comes about.

The particular expertise we bring to this book is that we are Lesbians and have lived together as lovers for nineteen years. We also helped to found the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955. Over the years in which we have been deeply involved in the homophile movement we have talked to, counseled, socialized with and been friends with thousands of Lesbians. The term homophile was put into usage by the Mattachine Society in the 1950s. Homosexual (using the Greek derivation of homo rather than the Latin) means sex with same, while homophile means love of same. Too often people think of homosexuality only in terms of specific sexual acts instead of considering a person’s sexuality as a single facet or characteristic of the whole being. We hope that this book will help to put that three-letter word sex in proper perspective with reference to the female homophile.

Because we are Lesbians we have lived the experiences that we are writing about. We have coped with the identity crisis, with the parent-child relationship both as child and as parent, and with the emotions of love and jealousy. We own our own home and have wrestled with plumbing problems, insurance, taxes and wills—not to mention gardening, for which we have no aptitude.

Our stance in the book is that of the everyday life experience of the Lesbian: how she views herself as a person; how she deals with the problems she encounters in her various roles as woman, worker, friend, parent, child, citizen, wife, employer, welfare recipient, home owner and taxpayer; and how she views other people and the world around her.

Admittedly, then, this is a subjective book. It is not a true confession. But it does not pretend to be scientific, either. It is written from experience—firsthand experience with the persons involved. It is partisan. But we hope it will be coolly, rationally, factually and heatedly partisan. For no book on the Lesbian can overlook the feelings, the thoughts, the self image, the beingness of the woman who has adopted this as her life style.

This isn’t just our book. It is the story of the many Lesbians we have met over the years, without whom it could never have been written. We wish to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of particular individuals who helped us with some of the nitty-gritty details: Hy Cohen, Sally Gearhart, Emogene Kuhn, Kenneth Zwerin, Barbara Lucas and Linda Chaney. To Ruth Gottstein and the rest of the Glide Publications staff we express special thanks for keeping the faith after McCall Publishing turned us down because, among other things, we apparently had no doubts about our life style, and that’s impossible.

Of course, we had our doubts in the beginning—society saw to that. But over the years, as you will see, we learned many things that led us to self acceptance—and liberation.

1. The Lesbian — Myth & Reality

So little is known about the Lesbian that even Lesbians themselves are caught up in the myths and stereotypes so prevalent in our society.

When we first started living together as a couple we knew practically nothing about female homosexuality. We only knew that we loved each other and wanted to be together. Somehow that tagged us as Lesbians and bound us to some mysterious underground gay society of which we were only barely aware. That was back in the days when the term gay was an in-group password, a means of double talk in a hostile straight (heterosexual) society. It was a word you could use to let someone else know you were homosexual without the fear that anyone overhearing it would understand—unless, of course, they were in the know. With increased attention of the media to the subjects of homosexuality and Gay Liberation, the term is now popular in its usage.

Del had read a few books—that’s all there were in earlier days. She had been to a number of gay bars, which was always a twitchy experience, since police raids were commonplace then. She had met a few Lesbians and had one previous affair.

Phyllis had been vaguely aware of homosexuality, but, like so many other women, never heard or thought of it in terms of the female, only in terms of the male. That the reason she and her roommate had been thrown out of their college dorm was undoubtedly due to implied homosexuality never occurred to her until years later. The dean of women and the housemother had charged that Phyllis and Jane were too close, that they engaged in double talk at the dinner table, that they did not mix socially with the other girls in the dormitory, and that they had missed lock out a couple of times.

Although she liked men, dated them and even once went so far as to become engaged, Phyllis still had reservations about taking that final step down the aisle. She sought a career in journalism and enjoyed her independence. She had always maintained a number of close friendships with women and recalls feeling very resentful when one of them would call up and cancel a prior engagement to go to the movies with her, just because some man had asked for a date.

That’s about where we were. Hardly the ideal background from which to launch a Lesbian marriage, which is the way we thought of our relationship. The only model we knew, a pattern that also seemed to hold true for those few Lesbians we had met, was that of mom-and-dad or heterosexual marriage. So Del assumed the role of butch (she was working at the time) and Phyllis, being completely brainwashed in society’s role of woman anyway, decided she must be the femme. Like her mother before her, she got up every morning to make breakfast—at least for the first week.

The closest friends we had at the time were a newly married heterosexual couple. They, too, assumed that Lesbians would adopt butch-femme roles. Sam happily encouraged Del to be a male chauvinist, slapping her on the back and plying her with cigars, all the while telling her she had to keep Phyllis in her place and coaching her on maintaining the upper hand. Meanwhile Sue and Phyllis plotted the traditionally sneaky ways women devise to gain and maintain the upper hand. If this sounds like an arm-wrestling match, it was. Like so many heterosexual couples, we played the roles in public, and with Sue and Sam, and then we went home and fought about them. The only thing that saved our relationship was Phyllis’s stubborn resolve that it would last at least a year. The fact we had known each other for more than three years and had established a basic friendship was the other thing we had going for us.

In the course of our nineteen years together we have learned that many Lesbians in our age group (late forties) went through the same kind of role playing. While a few become trapped in this butch-femme pattern, most come in time, as we did, to the realization that they are both women and that’s why they are together.Because the Lesbian is every woman. She is the college student preparing for a career that will make her economically independent and give her some measure of personal accomplishment. She is the dedicated nurse or the committed social worker. She works on the assembly line of an electronics plant, drives a taxicab, or goes to night school. The Lesbian is an attorney, an architect, or an engineer. She is the blind poet and songwriter. She serves on municipal commissions, is the author of a best seller, and is honored among the Ten Most Distinguished Women of the Year. She is a welfare recipient, an auto mechanic, a veterinarian, an alcoholic, a telephone operator, a civil service or civil rights worker. She may be a lieutenant in the armed forces or a beauty operator. And, being a woman in western society, she is certainly a clerk-typist, secretary or bookkeeper.

The Lesbian is aboard ship traveling around the world. She resides in every country. She lives in an apartment or is paying for her own home in the city, in the suburbs, or in a small country town. She is raising goats on a farm in the Ozarks or is part of a harem in Saudi Arabia. She is in attendance at state social gatherings in the White House. She lives in the Orient, Australia, Germany. She is a Democrat in the United States or a Socialist in Italy. She is the cloistered young Catholic woman in Latin America or lives in a kibbutz in Israel. She is a geisha girl in Japan or a belly dancer in a night club in New York City. Or she may be the Jane Doe suicide in the city morgue.

However women are depicted in world society, so may the Lesbian be. For the Lesbian is all women. As you who read this have related to women personally and generally in your life, so have you become personally involved with Lesbians, whether you have been aware of it or not. For you have known, met and talked with Lesbians throughout your life—in your family, at school, on the job, at the comer cocktail lounge, at the neighborhood bowling alley, at your church. You may have known and loved a Lesbian dearly or been wary of her, sensing that, despite all appearances to the contrary, she is somehow different.

Most of you can probably recall a distant cousin or a maiden aunt about whom the family whispered vaguely. But few of you wish to admit that the Lesbian in your life was really much closer to home. For we are also your daughters, your sisters, even sometimes your mothers. The Lesbian comes from all walks of society, every economic class, every educational level, every racial and ethnic group, every religious background. She is in every type of work, of every political persuasion, and in every part of the world. The Lesbian is:

—The divorced mother, Inez, who places her child in a day care center while she commutes to her office job in the city, barely eking out a living despite the child support minimally and grudgingly paid by her ex-husband on order of the court. Underlying her daily routine is the constant fear that she will be discovered to be a Lesbian and lose not only her job, but her child as well.

—A teacher in specialized education working with the deaf, for whose services several school districts have been competing. Yet in spite of her known expertise and talent as a teacher, should it become known that she is a Lesbian, Olga would be unemployable.

—Natalie, a likeable, adequate, very average worker in a plastics factory making wastebaskets, fired when it was made known that she was a Lesbian.

—Betty, caught up in a raid on a gay bar some years ago, who lost her job as a civil service playground director even though the charges against her were dismissed. She spent more than ten years in meaningless jobs before she once again was accepted in the civil service in an area where her education and talents could be put to use.

—A Black teenager, Bea, three months away from high school graduation, who was literally thrown out of her home when she told her mother she was gay.

—The successful business woman and socialite, Constance, active in civic affairs, who is seldom seen with her roommate of ten years lest the finger be pointed at her, thus destroying her image.

These are typical of the many Lesbians we have met over the years. We mention them to show how the preference for a member of her own sex as a love or life partner—which is all that sets the Lesbian apart from any other woman—can affect her entire life and inhibit or kill dreams, ambitions, creativity. Being a Lesbian makes her a misfit in American culture and sets up a barrier which prevents her from revealing herself to you. For her own protection, learned through painful experience, the Lesbian generally maintains a dual life—one that is visible and one that is kept secret. Understandably, this can lead to emotional conflicts, and time and energy wasted on weaving a web of lies. It can lead to a loss of self and potential in the process of face-saving conformity.

Understandably, too, since the Lesbian in our society is generally hidden, her existence has generated a great deal of conjecture and intrigue, out of which a whole body of folklore has been perpetrated on the public as fact.

Once aware of the Lesbian’s existence, most people tend to view her solely as a sexual being. She is seen as a sad caricature of a male, trying to dress and act in the manner she deems masculine, and generally aping some of men’s worst characteristics. Or she is conceived of as a hard, sophisticated female who indiscriminately seduces innocent girls or women into the mysteries of some perversion they know little or nothing about. On the other hand, she is seen as an unfortunate, pitiable spinster, who, unable to catch a man, has settled for a less desirable substitute in another woman as her lover—whom, of course, she will immediately abandon when and if she meets him. Some men fantasize the Lesbian as a voluptuous, sensuous mistress who is unscrupulous in her sexual tastes, insatiable in her sexual appetite and therefore indiscriminate in her choice of sexual partner.

These stereotypes are based upon the false assumption that the Lesbian is first and foremost sexual in all her thoughts, desires and actions. What people fail to realize is that being a Lesbian is not merely indulging in physical acts or lovemaking. For the woman involved it is a way of life, encompassing the structure of her whole personality, one facet of which is, of course, her sexuality. For her it is the expression of a way of feeling, of loving, of responding to other people.

Furthermore, Lesbians are no more preoccupied with sex than are other people. We don’t spend all our time in bed—and neither does anyone else we know. We, too, go to work, clean house, do the shopping, watch television, go to the movies, work on hobbies, have guests in for dinner, visit friends, and do all the other ordinary humdrum things which make up life in America today.

Also contrary to popular belief, most Lesbians seek relationships with those in their own age bracket. They do not put a premium on youth, as do many male homosexuals, but prefer partners with whom they have something in common besides sex. They look for companionship, community of interests, and all those other ingredients necessary to make any relationship work over a period of time.

Yet one of the myths that seems to hang on in our society is that Lesbians molest little girls and seduce young women. In actuality, childhood homosexual experiences are usually episodes of experimentation between little girls of the same age. Del recalls engaging in such experimentation at the age of nine with a girl who may have been a year younger and who, incidentally, was the initiator. But the incident bore no particular significance for Del at the time, since most of the youngsters, male and female, were in the habit of playing doctor and examining each other’s bodies and genitals. Instances of an adult woman molesting a small child are so rare that we have not run into even a single case.

We have known Lesbians who came out when they were teenagers, but their partners were schoolmates or youngsters in their peer group. We have also known eighteen- and nineteen-year olds who became involved with older women of twenty-two or so, above the legal age for marriage between members of the opposite sexes. But by and large, most older Lesbians, while appreciative of youthful good looks, are seeking someone more sophisticated and experienced. As forty-year-old Carmen put it, when she came to us hoping we might be able to introduce her to some older Lesbians: What on earth would I do with a twenty-year- old? I’m not looking for a daughter to raise!

A 1959 survey by the Daughters of Bilitis indicated a very high ratio of Lesbians in the teaching profession. In writing up the research, however, these women were lumped in with the professional classification which comprised 38 percent of the sampling. This particular point of information we purposely withheld at the time lest a witch hunt be initiated in the California school system. Discovery or even the mere accusation of a teacher’s homosexual orientation was cause for immediate dismissal or request for one’s resignation, along with revocation of one’s teaching credential, until 1969. It was then that the California State Supreme Court ruled that teachers may not have their teaching credential taken away simply because they have engaged in homosexual acts not specifically spelled out in the criminal statutes.

Despite the large number of Lesbians who are teachers, there is no data available, other than in fiction, that they have seduced or become sexually intimate with their female students. Yet the myth persists. It has always mystified us that the public remains so fearful of Lesbian teachers when criminal statistics clearly indicate that young girls who are seduced or raped are invariably victimized by men. While men are increasingly taking over the elementary classroom, there is still only concern lest they be homosexuals. We can only suppose that parents and school administrators are concerned solely with preventing the possibility of a homosexual encounter—like those police officers from Northern Station in San Francisco during a 1970 police-community relations confrontation with members of the homophile community:

Think what a traumatic effect it would have on a young boy! the police lieutenant cried out.

But what about the girls? What about rape? a young Lesbian countered.

That’s different. That’s ‘normal’, two patrolmen replied in unison.

Before we lay the bugaboo of homosexual child-molesting to rest, we must note that women, having found each other in the women’s liberation movement, are beginning to knock down this myth themselves. In New York City during their regular Saturday Women’s Liberation meetings in 1970, the women asked the men to take on the responsibility for childcare. The most reliable and dependable group of men to regularly report each week for such duty was from the Gay Liberation Front. Through a pact of mutual respect and trust, women learned to leave their young sons in the care of homosexual men without compunction, without hesitation. Some were even considering adding gay care centers to their demands.

Women have always been carefully warned to shun the Lesbian; after all, the sanctity of home and family must be protected. Men, on the other hand, become increasingly fascinated by the unattainable, independent woman who is not an adjunct or appendage to a man, who does not seek nor require his approval for her existence, who even dares to compete with him not only in the job market but for his women as well. The predatory male heterosexual can only imagine that the poor thing just hasn’t met the right man and, of course, is eager to lay claim to the title.

At one point, Del thought she really knew the answer to discouraging unwanted male advances. She told her boss, who had been pestering her, that she was gay. But much to her dismay, instead of discouraging him, this bit of juicy information only enhanced his ardor. It seemed his wife wouldn’t let him make love to her that way. As time went on, we learned that many Lesbians have used the same spuming technique with the same burning results.

But this woman-to-woman relationship, because it is contrary to the accepted and expected man-woman relationship and because there is so little known about it, is regarded as something weird, mysterious—and downright queer. By community standards anything that is different must also be wrong. Consequently some people’s first reaction, on learning that someone is a Lesbian, is that there must be something wrong with her physically. She must be some kind of biological freak whose genitals are somehow malformed; or perhaps she is the unfortunate victim of some type of hormone imbalance.

Phyllis was left with her mouth hanging open in astonishment when, on a guest appearance on his television show a few years ago, she was asked by the late Louis Lomax, What are the physiological differences between Lesbians and other women? Susan, who more recently, as part of her liberation, felt the need to tell her mother about her Lesbian life, was equally appalled when her mother grasped her hand and asked very solemnly, But why don’t you have an operation, dear?

Because there is no such operation. Neither our bodies nor the way they function is different from those of other females. Like other women we come in all sizes and shapes. Some of us are tall and lanky; some of us are short and fat. We are young and old, beautiful and homely, blonde and brunette, short-haired and long-haired, fair-skinned and dark-skinned—whatever the combination or variation. And no matter how you may look at it, we are and must be recognized and dealt with as women. In order to understand the Lesbian, it is therefore necessary that you think of her as a living, feeling, thinking human being: a woman. The Lesbian looks, dresses, acts, and is like any other woman. The only thing that distinguishes her as a Lesbian is her choice of another woman as her sex, love or life partner.

Wherever you find two women living together you cannot assume, however, that they are Lesbians, since many heterosexual women share apartments out of economic necessity or for companionship. Nor can you be sure that two women, because they date men, are heterosexual. It may only be a cover to protect their Lesbian relationship from gossip and innuendo. Karen recalls the time when a coworker who was driving her home after an overtime stint at the office declared emphatically, I can spot a ‘queer’ every time! The fact that she was talking to one had completely escaped her.

Another fallacy is the assumption that it takes one to know one: that there is some telltale sign, Morse Code signal or knowing glance exchanged between Lesbians at a mixed gathering. In all likelihood any Lesbian present at such a gathering would be very much on guard lest she give herself away—even to one of her own kind, whom she still regards as a threat in such social situations.

Appearance can also be misleading in trying to detect a woman’s sexual orientation. Nancy, on return from a camping trip at Yosemite National Park, told us she had finally figured out the way you can tell the Lesbians from the straight women. The stomping butch types wearing men’s jeans and boots usually had a husband and a number of kids trailing along behind them; the Lesbians, however, wore capris or women’s slacks so as to appear more feminine and not so obvious.

The American public puts much stock in the professional opinion of medical doctors: They ought to know; they are the authorities. Pardon us if we disagree—and with good reason. Our authority is personal experience, not only with leading the life of a Lesbian, but also with reading so much of the literature that indirectly affects that life.

The August, 1957, issues of two national magazines, on the newsstands at the same time, carried articles which purported to describe and enlighten the public about Lesbians. What Makes a Homosexual? in a publication called Adual Medical Cases written by Hugh Barnes, M.D., stated: The homosexual female is characterized by deficient fat in the shoulders and at the girdle, firm muscles, excess hair on the chest, back and legs, a tendency to over-development of the clitoris. There is also a tendency toward a shorter trunk, a contracted pelvis, under-development of the breasts, excess hair on the face and a low-pitched voice.

However, Edward Dengrove, M.D., writing on Homosexuality in Women for Sexology magazine, had this to say: Contrary to the popular conception of the woman with homosexual tendencies, she is not necessarily, or even usually, the extremely masculine woman, aggressive, strong and muscular, mannish in physical appearance and dress, lacking all the delicacy and gentleness we associate with the feminine.... For most Lesbians are not women who are pretending to be men, but rather women who cannot express their normal sexual drive in relationship to men, but must direct it towards other females instead. Even in the sexual sphere, the Lesbian remains essentially feminine, with the natural desires and reactions of a woman. . . .

Which one has the Toni? No wonder the public is confused! And no wonder many Lesbians who have sought therapy have found themselves explaining the whole phenomenon of homosexuality to their doctors.

Even though more is known about the Lesbian today than ever before, the stereotypes still persist, reinforced by what little has been recorded in history and by subsequent literary accounts. The history of female homosexuality is probably as old as the history of the human race itself; archaeologists have discovered prehistoric cave drawings of female figures engaging in homosexual acts together. But the term Lesbian is derived from the island of Lesbos, a triangular area of land in the Aegean Sea off the coast of what is now Turkey. Sappho, famous Greek lyric poetess of the early sixth century B.C., was supposed to have established a school for young girls and/or a cult for female homosexuals on the island. Historians and translators are at such variance about the details that Dr. Jeannette H. Foster, former librarian for the (Kinsey) Institute for Sex Research and author of Sex Variant Women in Literature, was prompted to point out that, by Ovid’s day, there was so much controversy about Sappho’s personal life that it almost seemed as if two Sapphos must have flourished on Lesbos, one the great poetess and the other the courtesan of undisciplined habits.

Born out of the Sappho controversy the Lesbian has thus been depicted as a childish romantic at best, or at worst a child molester or prostitute. Prior to the twentieth century the chronicles of history and literature were written almost exclusively by men. References to Lesbians, of course, reflected the bias of the authors, who never depicted women as wholly, or even primarily, homosexual; the male ego could never admit that a woman existed who could have sexual satisfaction without a man. Lesbian episodes depicted in literature take the form of the initiation of an innocent girl by an older woman more experienced in giving sexual pleasure to men; a diversion for the prostitute, an experiment by upper class ladies with their handmaids to alleviate boredom, or the desperate activity of nuns or prison inmates who have been isolated from men. The accounts are devoid of personal devotion in any such relations, and sexual play often involved more than two participants.

There are occasional references, however, to pairs of women who formed strongly emotional friendships, most famous of whom were the Ladies of Llangollen: Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, two seventeenth century Irish women who settled in a cottage in the Vale of Llangollen in north Wales. While they were sometimes called the Platonists, it is reported that Lady Eleanor wore men’s clothes, that her journal spoke of our bed, and that neither left their cottage for a single night throughout the fifty years they lived together. Even the accounts of the more recent long-term relationship between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas have a tendency to skirt the issue of their sexuality.

History also indicates that Lesbianism was existent among certain of the royalty and their courtiers, most notable of whom were Queen Christina of Sweden, Elizabeth I of England, and Marie Antoinette. But most of our knowledge of Lesbians in history is based on innuendo, rumor, or conjecture, and cannot be considered