Oral History and the Study of Sexuality in the Lesbian Community: Buffalo, New York, 1940-1960

Abstract

We began a study of the history of the Buffalo lesbian community, 1930-1960, to determine that community's contribution to the emergence of the gay liberation movement of the 1960s.' Because this community centered around bars and was highly role defined, its members often have been stereotyped as low-life societal discards and pathetic imitators of heterosexuality. We suspected instead that these women were heroines who had shaped the development of gay pride in the twentieth century by forging a culture for survival and resistance under prejudicial conditions and by passing this sense of community on to newcomers; in our minds, these are indications of a movement in its pre-political stages.2 Our original research plan assumed the conceptual division between the public (social life and politics) and the private (intimate life and sex), which is deeply rooted in modem consciousness and which feminism has only begun to question. Thus we began our study by looking at gay and lesbian bars -the public manifestations of gay life at the time and relegated sex to a position of less importance, viewing it as only incidentally relevant. As our research progressed we came to question the accuracy of this division. This article records the transformation in our thinking and explores the role of sexuality in the cultural and political development of the Buffalo lesbian community. At first, our use of the traditional framework that separates the public and private spheres was fruitful.3 Because the women who patronized the lesbian and gay bars of the past were predominantly working class and left no written records, we chose oral history as our method of study. Through the life stories of over forty nar-