Sex and Sensibility: Stories of a Lesbian Generation by Arlene Stein

Author:Arlene Stein [Stein, Arlene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2010-06-04T11:16:00+00:00

Getting Saved from the Seventies

Feminists had constructed a set of positive images of the potentially transformative possibilities of lesbian relationships. Often they "aris- tocratized" lesbianism, attributing superior capacities of nurturance, sensitivity, empathy, warmth, and understanding to women, and by implication especially to women who loved women.10 Lesbian relationships, many suggested, offered the best prospect for achieving equality and reciprocity-an idealization pivotal to lesbian feminist efforts to destigmatize lesbianism. But with time, many women came to question this formulation.

Looking at a lesbian feminist community in the Midwest in the mid- to late 1970s, sociologist Susan Krieger found that individuals frequently felt either overwhelmed or abandoned by the community. The merger of the individual and the community was something that many women sought, at least initially. But, in the end, it also led many individuals to experience a loss of self. All social groups confront their members with this kind of conflict, Krieger noted. But "in some groups," namely those in which the "desire for personal affirmation from the group is great, and the complementary desire for assertion of individuality is also strong," this experience is felt more intensely and seems to occur more frequently."

As they reached their thirties and forties, several of my interviewees lamented, their involvements with other lesbians, as lovers, friends, or simply acquaintances, were often highly emotionally charged and even "merged." 12 As Cindy Ross told me,

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