Playing the game of lesbian imagination: radical lesbian feminist organising in the Dutch Lesbian Nation

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1976, a small group of lesbian feminists in Amsterdam named themselves after Jill Johnston’s Lesbian Nation: The Feminist Solution (1973) and imagined a separate lesbian society, free from heteropatriarchal oppression. Despite naming themselves after Johnston, Lesbian Nation’s main aim was inspired by French feminist theorist Monique Wittig: to subvert the existing symbolic order, and create a new one in its wake. Based on archival research and interviews, this article shows how Lesbian Nation combined both lesbian separatist and cultural feminist tendencies, by experimenting with lesbian identity and creating a women’s culture. Discussing the similarities and differences between Lesbian Nation and its predecessor, Paarse September, this article illustrates how lesbian organising evolved in the Netherlands. More broadly, this article adds to lesbian feminist historiography, showing how a small group shaped their own lesbian feminist ideology – and brought this into practice – on a local scale.