Looking Back on Lesbian Studies

Abstract

At NWSA in 1979, when I proposed a book called Lesbian Studies to The Feminist Press, the words represented for me a pious hope, rather than a set of clear ideas. I was attracted to the audacity of the phrase, with its hint of hundreds of students, teachers, scholars, writers, artists, and publishers. If the reality fell far short of that, it was at least obvious by 1979 that energy was sustaining women's programs all over the country at the same time that we lesbians were largely invisible. Thus the phrase lesbian had a ring of urgency. At least it meant no more silence or invisibility. As I look back on the last ten years, I conclude that studies has had a profound impact on some individual lives, a slight impact on women's studies programs, and virtually no impact at all on the larger community of scholars. The message that lesbians exist is still too image-shattering to be absorbed by the academy, even in the mid-1980's. If you picture the university as a castle surrounded by a moat, studies is the band of archers beyond the moat, firing arrows in the air and seeing them fall harmlessly to earth. The lords of the castle know we are out there. They want us to go away. But the castle is in no imminent danger of being stormed. How does one gauge the impact of studies on individual lives? The sources of my impressions are conversations with friends, correspondence, and hints and clues picked up from reading and observing. Occasionally I get letters from undergraduates who are pursuing some topic related to lesbianism in an independent studies course. Sometimes, too, I meet with women writing theses and dissertations for which material is significant. These women study differently from their peers; they are grappling with life-changing ideas and discoveries. Their number is probably not large. But the emotional benefits of integrating their experience with their research can hardly be exaggerated. And the victory of power attained by reaching some accommodation with the academy may significantly strengthen women who have always felt like outsiders. Lesbian studies is not of course limited to work by women inside colleges and universities: excellent grassroots work has flourished for more than a decade, in art and photography as well as the printed word. A recent example is the Lesbian Periodicals Index, edited by Clare Potter and published by Naiad Press. Material by and about lesbians seems somewhat more integrated into women studies than it was ten years ago. Most heterosexual women who have worked in programs since the early and mid seventies are more aware of issues than before, and often they have made friends with lesbians. Although these women may not be comfortable with every manifestation of a strong presence in the field, they are generally not homophobic. The homophobia comes from the more conventional heterosexual women who have joined women's studies only recently, after programs were established. More acceptable to men in power than the feminist foremothers, these accommodating women want the image of women's studies untainted by lesbianism. As far as I can tell, very few women's studies departments offer special courses on lesbians, although there are probably more in 1986 than there were five years ago. The typical pattern seems to be that a course is offered when a is available to teach it, but if she leaves the course disappears. My impression is that in only a few women's studies programs are lesbians on a completely equal footing with heterosexual women, for example, at San Francisco State University and at Mankato State. On the other hand, many women's studies program coordinators are lesbians, and some of them are able, no doubt, to raise questions even in programs where they have no colleagues or students. One litmus paper test for the heterosexual teacher of