To Believe in Women;

To Believe in Women; What Lesbians Have Done For America-A History
By Lillian Faderman. Houghton Mifflin 1999Pp. 434.

Lillian Faderman manages to cover most of the few famous women that we studied in school and draw out a much more personal picture. In this monumental work, she covers several important areas of women’s history, suffrage, social work, education and the professions. In each chapter, Faderman helps the reader to realize that most of the women that made these movements spent their personal lives in committed relationships with other women. The reader is left with the understanding and feeling that the world would be a very different place today without the work and devotions of these women who would have been, in a later time, described as lesbians. She includes the very famous such as Susan B. Anthony and lesser known women as well.For some, her controversial claims are a welcome completion to biographies that erased lesbian existence. Though this is not all new information as other historians have discovered much of this already but Faderman puts it all together in a cohesive view of the personal lives and loves of these women. There are those who will argue that there is no evidence to prove that these women were lesbians. On the other hand, there is also no conclusive evidence to prove that they were not.
Considering that the idea of self-identifying based on sexual orientation is a relatively new phenomenon, as Faderman discusses in several of her works, it is really a moot point. But one thing is certain; much historical documentation has been skewed away from presenting this side of the story due to the stigma of lesbianism.
Faderman begins with her study of the women’s suffrage movement leaders, which includes Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt. She describes Shaw as someone who actually fit the “Sexual Inversion” model that was being popularized by Havelock Ellis. She was, to put it simply, a life long tomboy, both in hobbies and dress and left records that would indicate she might very have been considered a lesbian in later eras. Catt’s story was a little more complex. She married George Catt after the death of her first husband and insisted on her heterosexuality to the public. But her private letters indicate that she had a passionate relationship with another suffrage leader, Molly Hay and might have been bisexual if not a lesbian. Faderman continues with the social welfare arena, covering the lives of Jane Addams and Frances Kellor. She continued with women leaders in education such as M. Carey Thomas and Mary Emma Wooley and concluded with the field of medicine, covering the life of Emily Blackwell.
Some of the women in her book were married to men, though largely to understanding men who gave them much freedom. But many of these female pioneers were never married to men but instead in “Boston marriages” to other women. It is on this issue where Faderman makes her key point. She points out that heterosexual marriage historically tends to burden women with bearing children and overseeing household chores. Many of these women did not enter into these types of marriages but even more telling is that by entering into committed relationships with other women, they actually had support that enabled their works. In some cases, that support was financial, in some cases, one of the partners actually did run the household allowing the other to have more freedom to pursue social activism. And finally, the emotional support was critical in allowing these women to do their work.
Faderman makes note of the fact that that same-sex pairs were treated with the respect generally reserved for heterosexual couple. It is not entirely clear how far the knowledge of their intimate arrangements traveled outside their own circles but there did seem to be an acknowledgement of these relationships that existed on a wide scale basis. There is no doubt that this work will be inspiring and validating to many lesbians. Understanding what this tells us about lesbianism and what this tells us about women will continue to be studied and critiqued as examination like this continue in years to come.