These are some of the women who were famous for loving other women throughout time. The list also includes information on lesbian topics and literature.
Part 2: Literature and music (1800s to 1900s)
Also see Historical Lesbianism - Part 1: The early years
1. Natalie Clifford Barney (1876 – 1972)
She was an openly lesbian, American playwright, poet and novelist who lived in Paris. A weekly salon was held at her home (for more than 60 years) that brought together major artistic celebrities from around the world. Lesbian topics were the main focus. Some of the members were: artist - Romaine Brooks; social host - Gertrude Stein and novelist - Radclyffe Hall. She formed a “Women’s Academy” in response to the all-male French Academy, and worked to promote writing by women. She published love poems addressed to women as early as 1900. In her writings she supported feminism and pacifism. She opposed monogamy and had many long and short-term relationships. Some of her relationships included poet Renée Vivien, dancer Armen Ohanian and a 50-year relationship with painter Romaine Brooks. Her life and love affairs served as inspiration for many novels including, The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall.
2. (Marguerite) Radclyffe Hall (1880 – 1943)
The English poet and author, Radclyffe Hall, was a lesbian, but described herself as a “congenital invert”. This term was taken from the writings of Havelock Ellis and other turn-of-the-century sexologists.
She is best known for the classic lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness – a plot that centres on a female character, which identifies herself as an “invert” after reading, Psychopathia Sexualis by Krafft-Ebbing and lives within the homosexual subculture of Paris.
‘The novel included a foreword by Havelock Ellis and was intended to be a call for tolerance for “inverts” by publicizing their disadvantages and accidents of being born inverted. She ascribed to Ellis and Krafft-Ebbing's theories and rejected Freud's theory that same sex attraction was caused by childhood trauma and was curable. The publicity Hall received was due to unintended consequences; the novel was tried for obscenity in London, a spectacularly scandalous event described as "the crystallizing moment in the construction of a visible modern English lesbian subculture" by Professor Laura Doan.
She reflected the appearance of a "mannish" woman in the 1920s: short cropped hair, tailored suits (often with pants), and eyeglasses that became widely recognized as a "uniform". When British women participated in World War I, they became familiar with masculine clothing, and were considered patriotic for wearing uniforms and pants. However, post-war masculinisation of women's clothing became associated with lesbians.’
3. Gladys Bentley (1907 – 1960)
This African American blues singer was renowned for her songs about her affairs with women. She appeared at the Clam House – one of New York City’s most notorious gay speakeasies, in the 1920s and headlined in the early thirties at Harlem’s Ubangi Club - where she was backed up to a chorus line of drag queens. She was a 250 pound women dressed in men’s clothes – a signature tuxedo and a top hat. She flirted outrageously with women in the audience, while playing the piano and singing her own raunchy lyrics, in a deep growling voice, to the popular tunes of the day.
She relocated to California, where she was billed as “America’s Greatest Sepia Piano Player”, and the “Brown Bomber of Sophisticated songs”. She was frequently harassed for wearing men’s clothing; claimed that she had married a “white woman” in Atlantic City; and was openly lesbian during her early career. She later started wearing dresses, married a man (who denied that they ever married) and studied to be a minister, claiming to have been “cured” by taking female hormones. She died from Pneumonia at 52 years old.
4. Die Freundin (1924 – 1933)
Berlin had a vibrant homosexual culture in the 1920s demonstrated by cabaret acts, a magazine titled Die Freundin (The Girlfriend) and another titled Garçonne specifically for male transvestites and lesbians.
5. The Ladder (1956 - 1972)
The Ladder was the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States.
In 1952 homosexuality was listed as a pathological emotional disturbance in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Homosexuality was viewed as a curable sickness (this was widely believed - even among many lesbians themselves) and very little information beyond medical and psychiatric texts were available.
Community meeting places were raided by police at least once a month - those arrested were exposed in newspapers.
‘In response, eight women in San Francisco met in their living rooms in 1955 to socialize and have a place to dance. When they decided to make it a regular meeting, they became the first organization for lesbians in the U.S., titled the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB). The DOB began publishing a magazine titled The Ladder in 1956; inside the front cover of every issue was their mission statement, the first of which stated was "Education of the variant", and was intended to provide women with knowledge about homosexuality—specifically relating to women, and famous lesbians in history. However, by 1956 the term "lesbian" had such a negative meaning that the DOB refused to use it as a descriptor, choosing "variant" instead. The DOB spread to Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, and The Ladder was mailed to hundreds, eventually thousands, of DOB members discussing the nature of homosexuality, sometimes challenging the idea that it was a sickness, with readers offering their own reasons why they were lesbians, and suggesting ways to cope with the condition or society's response to it.
British lesbians followed with the publication of Arena Three beginning in 1964, with a similar mission.’
Source: Wikipedia
Si-lest’ © 2009
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