Cecilia Bruni

“The Lavender Menace:”
The Complicated Relationship between Feminism and Lesbianism in the Second Wave of Feminism

Abstract:

This project will examine the place of lesbians in the second wave of feminism, a movement for women’s rights that occurred in the United States from the late 1960s through the 1980s. A complicated relationship developed between lesbianism and feminism, in which lesbians were excluded from one part of the feminist movement, yet subsequently revered as the ultimate feminists by another portion of the movement, because they lived lives fully devoted to women. Lesbian feminism was a manifestation of this romanticism of lesbianism, a brand of feminism that politicized lesbianism as a feminist choice, and encouraged all women to abandon heterosexuality, and men in general. While lesbian feminism created a space for lesbians within the feminist movement, it focused more on feminism than it did lesbianism. Its essentialist identity politics created prescriptive codes of political correctness, de-sexualizing lesbianism and emphasizing patriar chy above all other forms of oppression upon women. Ultimately, lesbian feminism created a space in which feminist interests were considered to be lesbian interests, and any woman who did not fit the crafted image of a lesbian feminist felt ostracized from the movement.

Thesis Advisor:  B. Shapiro