Lesbian Heresy

Sheila Jeffreys is a lesbian and a revolutionary feminist who has been active within the Women’s Liberation Movement since 1973. She has been working in Women’s Liberation campaigns against pornography and male violence since 1978, and was a founding member of London Women Against Violence (WAVAW) in 1980. She is the author of The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880–1930 (1985) and of Anticlimax. a Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution (1990). and editor of The Sexuality Debates (1987). She has contributed many articles on feminist theory and lesbian sexuality to journals including Trouble and Strife, Gossip, Lesbian Ethics and Women’s Studies International Forum. She was a founding member of the London Lesbian Archive and the London Lesbian History Group (1989). She is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Other books by Sheila Jeffreys: The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality, 1880–1930 (1985) Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution (1990) The Sexuality Debates (1987), Editor Not a Passing Phase: Reclaiming Lesbians in History, 1840–1985 (1989), Contributing Editor. The Lesbian Heresy A Feminist Perspective on the Lesbian Sexual Revolution Sheila Jeffreys Spinifex Press Pty Ltd 504 Queensberry Street North Melbourne Vic 3051 Australia First published by Spinifex Press 1993 Copyright Sheila Jeffreys 1993 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book. Typeset in 10/13 pt Caslon and 8/10 pt Helvetica Light by Lorna Hendry, Melbourne Printed in Australia by Southwood Press, Marrickville NSW Cover design by Lin Tobias, Melbourne National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: CIP Jeffreys, Sheila, 1948 – The lesbian heresy. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 1 875559 17 5 1. Lesbianism. I. Title. 305.489664 Contents Dedication to Sandy Horn Introduction ix 1 The Creation of Sexual Difference 1 2 The Lesbian Sexual Revolution 17 3 Lesbian Sex Therapy 47 4 The Essential Lesbian 59 5 Return to Gender: Postmodernism and Lesbian and Gay Theory 79 6 The Lesbian Outlaw 99 7 A Pale Version of the Male: Lesbians and Gay Male Culture 117 8 A Deeper Separation 149 Appendix: Sadomasochism: The Erotic Cult of Fascism 171 References 191 Index 199 Dedication to Sandy Horn This book is dedicated to my friend Sandy Horn. For me Sandy represents the humour, the creativity and the sheer guts that the lesbian community has needed for its survival. Sandy learnt about the necessity of community in San Francisco in the late fifties when she survived the sexual McCarthyism of the time through the support of other lesbian and gay friends who were in the same boat. They coped with a hostile society by sending it up with a bitter laughter which Sandy still employs to great effect Sandy left San Francisco before it became a city in which lesbians and gays could begin to relax and came to London in 1965. In the US and in Britain she was involved in the lesbian political organisations of the sixties such as the Daughters of Bilitis and in London, the Minorities Research Group. In 1974 Sandy produced the first edition of Gaia’s Guide, the very first travel guide for women and lesbian travellers with information on safe places to stay and socialise. From the first she included a host of feminist resources such as women’s centres, clinics, bookstores, rape crisis centres. She produced Gaia’s Guide for 18 years, selling 8,500 at its peak in 1986, accomplishing a remarkable feat in international lesbian networking. Sandy is an extraordinarily talented builder of lesbian networks. She is a fount of information and busily introduces lesbians to each other, taking the responsibility of Gaia’s Guide as far as personally introducing travelling dykes to places they should go and lesbians they should know in London. Sandy has always been one of those at the hub of the lesbian community, one who has helped to keep it going and she still does. viii I met Sandy in 1985 but didn’t get to know her until 1986 when she got involved in the London Lesbian History Group and also in Women Against Violence Against Women. She is a mainstay of the Lesbian History Group striking awe into new and younger members with her breadth of knowledge and experience of lesbian history and culture. In 1988 she organised the publicity for the Lesbian Archive Summer School and since the Archive fell on hard times and lost its grant in April 1991 she has thrown her energies into helping to keep the Archive going and open to lesbians through sheer determination. Sandy combines a dedication to the welfare of lesbians, and to the building of lesbian culture with an acute feminist consciousness, particularly around violence against women and the sexual abuse of girls. There is much in The Lesbian Heresy which might make lesbians despair for the future of our community. For this reason it is important to be aware of the work of lesbians such as Sandy who have helped to keep the lesbian community going in the bad times as well as the good, and who can see through and beyond the exigencies of the moment such as the lesbian sexual revolution. Sandy has a gift for friendship. Here in Australia I meet and hear of lesbians who have benefited from that gift even twenty or twenty five years ago. I am delighted to be a friend of Sandy’s and our friendship means to me the uniting of two traditions of how it is to be a lesbian. We come from very different directions, San Francisco in the fifties and the political lesbianism of Britain in the seventies, to find ourselves bound together by affection and in considerable, though rarely complete, agreement, over what is needed for lesbian liberation in the nineties. In warmest lesbian friendship. Sheila Jeffreys, Melbourne, March 1993. Introduction The political theory of lesbian feminism transformed lesbianism from a stigmatised sexual practice into an idea and a political practice that posed a challenge to male supremacy and its basic institution of heterosexuality. Lesbian feminists articulated this challenge in the 1970s. They were heretics. Fundamental to lesbian feminist practice was the rejection of the sexological construction of lesbianism. The ideas of the medical establishment—that lesbianism was a congenital anomaly, that lesbianism was psychologically determined, a result of penis envy, that lesbianism was a sexual deviation which deserved to reside in sexological textbooks alongside child molestation and underwear fetishism—were thrown out of the window. We were constructing a new feminist universe. Starting with consciousness- raising, in an atmosphere of great optimism, we re-labelled lesbianism as a healthy choice for women based upon self-love, the love of other women and the rejection of male oppression. Any woman could be a lesbian. It was a revolutionary political choice which, if adopted by millions of women, would lead to the destabilisation of male supremacy as men lost the foundation of their power in women’s selfless and unpaid, domestic, sexual, reproductive, economic and emotional servicing. It was to be the base from which we could reach out to dismantle men’s power. It was to be an alternative universe in which we would construct a new sexuality, a new ethics, a new culture in opposition to malestream culture. It was to be a powerhouse from which new feminist and lesbian positive values would reach to transform the world for women and bring the sado-society to an end. Lesbian feminists were instrumental in creating most of the building blocks of the lesbian community which are now taken for granted by young women coming out. We set up lesbian presses and archives, dances, community centres, support and coming out groups and poured out an ocean of ideas in newsletters, journals, books. Some of those instrumental in the construction of lesbian culture in these years are now deeply critical of lesbian feminism and are disassociating themselves from it but I would still contend that most, whether old lesbian or new political lesbians held to some common lesbian feminist values in those days only a few years ago, and that it was the energy created by a revolutionary movement that fuelled these developments. Working x class lesbians, black lesbians, ethnic minority lesbians and indigenous lesbians were all involved from the beginning in lesbian feminism in all the countries of the western world, though they may not have been in large numbers and their voices may not have been those most usually heard before the late seventies. This book has been written in order to help myself and other lesbian feminists understand the backlash against these politics which has taken place in the 1980s and nineties. The backlash against feminism in general has been documented powerfully by Naomi Wolf and Susan Faludi and the backlash against feminist analyses of sexuality and pornography has been well covered in the excellent collection The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism.1 The backlash against feminism is probably mostly understood as an attack by the forces of male supremacist reaction outside the women’s liberation movement itself. Such an attack has certainly been happening as the result of the triumph of conservative politics in the western world in the last decade. But it needs to be acknowledged that as forces outside the feminist movement increase their pressures, there will be a breaking of ranks within the movement itself.

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