‘‘A Public sense of ourselves’’: communication and community-building in Canada’s LesbiaNews/LNews, 1989–98

Barbara M Freeman

doi:10.16997/wpcc.138

Abstract

LesbiaNews, later known as LNews, was an alternative media monthly, written and produced in Victoria, British Columbia by a dedicated group of women who devoted themselves to raising the public profile of the lesbian community through its pages. It was an outstanding example of a counter-public sphere publication, produced by and for a female minority group. Using critical feminist analysis of its contents and oral history interviews with its key editors, this article explores how LesbiaNews/LNews’ shifting editorial mandate reflected the conflicts among its contributors and readers over lesbian feminism and sexual identity politics. The editors, who all held their own strong beliefs, found that promoting both solidarity and diversity was difficult in a lesbian community that was increasingly apolitical, fragmented and elusive, and losing its few social supports.

Highlights

LesbiaNews, later known as LNews, was an alternative media monthly, written and produced in Victoria, British Columbia by a dedicated group of women who devoted themselves to raising the public profile of the lesbian community through its pages
LesbiaNews had made its debut in Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, devoting itself to providing news and views on political and cultural diversity, religion, sexuality, family and social life from a female, same-sex perspective
One LesbiaNews writer (Lightwater, 1997), adopting the common assumption that lesbians represent 5 percent of any given population, reckoned that there were about 9000 lesbians in the area by the late 1990s, how many were involved in the local lesbian community was an open question, since they were statistically invisible (McLauchlin, 1998b)

Summary

Introduction

LesbiaNews, later known as LNews, was an alternative media monthly, written and produced in Victoria, British Columbia by a dedicated group of women who devoted themselves to raising the public profile of the lesbian community through its pages. She hoped to provide a public forum in which contributors and readers could discuss and debate lesbian feminist ideas and how they related to their sense of political identity and community (Yaffe interview, 2011).

Results

Conclusion