Lesbian Feminists of Color

Table of Contents

• Lesbian Feminist of Color
• Select Bibliography
• Some Sister Links
• Third-World & Post-Colonial Sister Links

Lesbian Feminist of Color

By Ara Wilson.

If women of color have been said to live in a "double bind," then lesbians of color can be seen as "triply bound." Lesbians of color have been active in pre-Stonewall (pre-1969) Civil Rights struggles and post-1960s movements. These women have charted the complex situations of women navigating homophobia, sexism, racism, economic liberalism, and ethnocentrism in dominant culture, their own communities, and various radical worlds.

Numerous women of African, Latin American, Fourth World (native, indigenous), or Asian-Pacific descent identified as both lesbian and feminist, although not always preferring those terms, while a few, like Anna Lee, embraced lesbian separatism. Typically, though, lesbians of color felt excluded, alienated, or ignored in white lesbian bars, events, or political groups. Moreover, their presence in and influence on predominantly white radical lesbian movements often remains obscured. Lesbians existing within colonized or oppressed cultures have drawn on the passionate traditions to express and understand their same-sex desires, as Chicana and "two-spirited" Native American feminists have so aptly shown. But as well, many have found denial or rejection in the nationalism, religion, and patriarchal mores of their home communities.

Another way that third-world women more generally influenced lesbian feminism was as role models. The politics of de-colonizing and third-world liberation struggles in the 1960s to early 1970s provided one of the most important reference points for first-world radical movements. Women of the "third world" (both in the global South and within the U.S.) served as inspiration, guides, and sometimes symbolic dressing for lesbian feminism. Attention to women in North Vietnam, for example, helped to sharpen U.S.-based activists' critique of the American government and to see patriarchal, white supremicist, and capitalist oppressions as interconnected. The visions of third-world and decolonizing revolutionary efforts provided one of the most compelling models for lesbian feminist notions of radical politics and strategies.

The broader visibility of lesbians of color emerged in the later 1970s and especially into the 1980s, notably with the work of such authors as Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, and Cherríe Moraga, among others, and after the peak of lesbian feminist separatist movements. The 1977 "Black Feminist Statement" by the Combahee River Collective offered a complex, radical position paper on the intersectionality of "racial, sexual [gender], heterosexual, and class oppression." Lorde's insistence on recognizing, not denying, differences and the essential place of the "erotic" in politics of life have had wide influence as well. Finally, Alice Walker's conception of "womanism" (an umbrella covering feminists of color) centrally included women's affectional and sexual relations with each other.

Despite the global image of lesbianism as "a Western thing," organizing around lesbian feminist issues also emerged in many parts of the third world, and among the growing transnational communities within the first world. The work of Chicana lesbians, for example, explores the ways that Latina lesbians in America desired and identified across a multitude of borders. In post-colonial settings in the third world, women working on behalf of same-sex love often invoked different terminology and emphasized the impact of family obligations, poverty, and Western imperialism on their lives. In 1975, as the first United Nations World Conference on Women was underway in Mexico City, Mexican lesbians began to voice their concerns and organize locally and internationally. Latinas formed nationally based lesbian groups (such as Mexico's El Closet de Sor Juana) and also a vital Latin American network. In 1990, at a meeting in Bangkok, Asian lesbians launched the Asian Lesbian Network. As with their counterparts in the first world, lesbians working in the global south also grapple with addressing questions of language, ethnicity, color, religion, region, and class.

Lesbians of color have shown that, despite 1970s lesbian separatists' desire to escape or overthrow patriarchal oppression, the lesbian feminist project could not themselves transcend the racism, ethnocentrism, or white privilege of dominant society. Lesbians of color have argued that lesbian feminism practiced or theorized by white women is perpetuates racism in ways both obvious and subtle:

• because white lesbians behave in racist, ethnocentric, or condescending ways
• because separatism ignores the fact women and men of color are similarly oppressed by race and ethnicity, and therefore that women feel solidarity with, and often organize with, men in their communities
• because the culture, priorities, and styles of lesbian feminism is drawn from white history and society (e.g., emphasizing European figures and symbols, and defining womyn's music and lesbian culture through white culture's forms)
• because universal generalizations about patriarchy or women denies the significant differences between women based on race, class, ethnicity, nationality, religious background, and so forth
• because radical feminists did not fully examine their own privilege, power, and accountability in terms of race, class, or nationality
• because lesbian feminist theory has privileged sexuality and gender over race in evaluating women's experience and oppression

Select Bibliography

• Mary Ann Weathers. 1969. "An Argument for Black Women's Liberation as a Revolutionary Force" in No More Fun and Games: A Journal of Female Liberation, Cambridge, Mass: Cell 16. Issue 2 (Feb 1969) p.66-70
• Toni Cade [Bambara], ed. 1970. The Black Woman: An Anthology. NY: New American Library.
• Maya Angelou. 1970. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House.
• Maxine Williams and Pamela Newman. 1970. Black Women's Liberation. NY: Pathfinder Press.
• Third World Women's Alliance. (1971?) Black Women's Manifesto. NY: Third World Women's Alliance.
• Mirta Vidal. 1971. Chicanas Speak Out - Women: New Voice of La Raza. NY: Pathfinder Press.
• Pat Parker. 1972. Poetry Collections: Child of Myself. Oakland, CA: Shameless Hussy Press.
  -----. 1974. Pit Stop. Oakland, CA: Women's Press Collective.
• Journals circa 1975:
• Black Women's Log. Springfield, MA.
• Concilio Mujeres. San Francisco.
• Margaret Sloan-Hunter. 1976. "The Issue is Woman Identification." Plexus. Vol. 3, no. 4. Reprinted in Hoagland and Penelope 1988 For Lesbians Only.
• Barbara Smith. 1977 "Toward A Black Feminist Criticism." Conditions 2.
• Combahee River Collective. 1977. "A Black Feminist Statement." Printed in Z. Eisenstein, ed. Capitalist Patriarchy, 1979.
• Pat Parker. 1978. Womanslaughter. Oakland, CA: Diana Press.
  -----. 1978 Movement in Black. Oakland, CA: Diana Press; Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1983; Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1989.
• Michele Wallace. 1978. "On the National Black Feminist Organization" in Feminist Revolution. New York: Random House, 1978. 174-175.
• Michelle Wallace. 1979. Black macho and the myth of the superwoman New York: Dial Press.
• Audre Lorde. 1979. "Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist Response." Conditions 4: 30-36.
• 1979 Journal Issues:
  • Heresies 8. Third World Women: The Politics of Being Other.
  • off our backs. Ain't I a Womon Issue (June).
  • Conditions 5: The Black Women's Issue (Autumn).
  • Bridge Asian American Women.
• Juana Maria Paz. 1980. The La Luz Journal. Fayettevill, ARK.
• Sirini Avedis. 1980. Tatoos. Recording. Terrapin Records.
• Anna Lee. 1981. "One Black Separatist." Innerviews." Vol. 5, no. 3. Reprinted in Hoagland and Penelope 1988 For Lesbians Only.
• bell hooks. 1981. Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Boston: South End Press.
• Barbara Smith, Gloria T. Hull, and Patricia Bell Scott, eds. 1982 All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave. New York: Feminist Press.
• Barbara Smith, ed. 1983. Home Girls: a Black Feminist Anthology. New York: Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press.
• Angela Y. Davis, 1983. Women, Race and Class. New York: Random House.
• Alice Walker. 1983. In Search of Our Mothers Gardens. NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. (This work coined the term womanist.)
• Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua, eds. 1984. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. New York: Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press. (See the dialogue between Beverly and Barbara Smith and the extensive bibliography at the back.)
• Audre Lorde. 1984. Sister Outsider. New York: The Crossing Press.
• Barbara Christian. 1987. Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers. New York: Teachers College Press.
• Gloria Anzaldúa. 1987. Borderlands/la Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.

Lesbian Feminist Chronology 1963-1976

1963

Guides to Lesbian Websites

Lesbian Groups

Archives and Library Sources

• Southern California Lesbian History
• Notable Lesbians of Color
• Lesbian History Project: This seems to be the same as www.lesbian.org's history page.
• Lesbians of Color: From USC, a list of interviews and articles about lesbians of color.