Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America

Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America
By Lillian Faderman. Penguin Books 1991Pp. 373.

This can really be considered the third work in Faderman’s historical trilogy though it was written before her more recent “What Lesbians Have Done for America”. She begins with a synopsis of her first book that covers in detail the subject of romantic friendships and takes us through to the twentieth century. During this time, we see the evolution of women’s relationships of all kinds as the veil of sexual innocence is finally removed. As in all her work, she reminds the reader that the concept of sexual orientation that we have today has not always been so. And this book documents “the extent to which sexuality,” and sexual categories, can be affected by a broad range of social factors and not just sexual drive. As she takes us beyond romantic friendships, Faderman describes the works of the early sexologists and the theory of sexual inversion. She believes that it was the publicity of their works that was responsible for giving a kind of sexuality to women. On the other hand, any woman who was drawn to non-feminine pursuits was often considered an invert. In many ways, sexuality had little to do with the label but instead a lack of acceptance of the proscribed roles of women.
During the 1920’s, we see an era where there is a real progression in terms of women’s roles and sexuality. At a time, when some people began to tentatively cross some of the required racial borders, the same can be said in terms of gender roles though most of the experimentation was a passing phase. But during this era, there was bisexual experimentation and the blossoming of a bohemian subculture that accepted gays and lesbians. There were also more public images of working class lesbians that dressed as men and took some degree of male privilege. But at the same time, the concept of compaionate heterosexual marriages began to take root. It was this, as much as anything that created a need to suppress women’s same sex relationships.The limited gains of the twenties were quickly reversed by the Great Depression. Living life as a lesbian was a great challenge and a bisexual compromise such that was made by Eleanor Roosevelt was the best that most women could do. From this time onward, the book chronicles several phases of what could be considered the modern era of lesbian identity.
During World War II, we see more lesbian social opportunity. War offers a much more difficult emotional issue that displaced the focus on sexual morality. In addition, many women were joining branches of the armed services which were often a magnet for women with an emotional pull toward other women. These factors combined with an opportunity to leave small home towns left more women than ever with the chance to meet others like themselves. So that even when the repression of the fifties began, the knowledge that they were not alone and an unwillingness to accept that fate helped form the basis for later political activism. And during that time, working class women began to form a clear structured distinct subculture.
Faderman’s analysis of the intersection of lesbian and feminist politics is perhaps the most interesting part of the book. Lesbian-feminist revised the concept of identity to suggest that all women had the potential to be lesbians. They also widened the definition of lesbianism to a love and support of other women. It was much more political than sexual and as a result added to the ranks, at least temporarily, of those that could be called lesbians. But the concept of forming a lesbian nation never really got off the ground. In-fighting and perhaps the fact that many of these women were on some level sexually drawn to men made the doom of this concept a certainty.From lesbian feminism evolved another cultural clash over the very basic concept of what kind of sexuality is acceptable. Traditional feminists felt that lesbian sex had to be within the bounds of lesbian ethics as they defined them. Many other, more sexually oriented lesbians were branching off to explore and experiment with pushing the sexual boundaries. Ironically, the reader may find that this was a war that marginalized the majority of lesbians who fell in neither camp. And that takes the story to its final chapter which shows that there was no longer “one way” to becoming a lesbian.This book is profound in that is able to present lesbianism not only as a sexual orientation, but as a cultural and political movement. And as such, it has been affected by the evolution of culture and politics. There are chapters left to write as the final chapter, called “The Tower of Babel to Community” ends before our present day venture into the world of marriage. While the baby boom continues, nothing defines the lesbian experience in 2005 than where each woman stands on the question of marriage.