The Complexities and Complications of Lesbian Identity in Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers In her work Odd Girls

and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America, Lillian Faderman seeks to understand how and why love between women changed so drastically over the course of the century from that of a harmless romantic friendship, to a stigma, and eventually a source of pride. Using archives, journals, published materials and living voices, Faderman explores how lesbianism was constructed, perceived, and experienced during the changing eras of American history. She approaches her analysis from the social constructionist perspective, arguing that, in order for women to live as lesbians, the concept first had to be constructed. This first stage occurred with the dissemination of the work of sexologists from the turn of the century that labeled homosexuality as congenital and robbed women of the sexual innocence of their love. It was the acceptance of this designation of abnormal and unusual that allowed for the formation of a lesbian identity. Proceeding decade by decade, Faderman argues that through a series of metamorphoses made possible by the economic, political, and social shifts of the twentieth-century, the meaning of lesbianism itself changed and came to include lifestyle, ideology and the establishment of subcultures and institutions (Faderman 4). In this work, Faderman is largely successful in demonstrating that the changing times influenced how lesbian identity developed. She artfully discusses how a variety of factors, such as psychology, urbanization, economic changes, and public policy and government, impacted changes in the love between women. Her analysis is also significant in that it captures the complex relationship between the generation of social constructs and stigmas and how they were experienced and internalized by the women living through them. Faderman identifies how these social realities influenced subsequent metamorphoses and fed the cycle of radicalization and conservative push back, a larger trend that is prominent throughout the history of sexuality. While Faderman often employs loose terminology and fails to give race the same amount of attention that she does class when examining the lesbian experience, her ambitious work is largely successful in describing the ways in which lesbianism has vastly changed due to 1 Cece Spencer

factors other than sexual drive (Faderman 308). As a social constructionist, a vital task Faderman undertakes is to prove that lesbianism is a construct more than a congenital sexual attraction to other women. She begins by exploring how romantic friendships of the early twentieth century, many of which certainly would have been considered lesbians today, were generally viewed as harmless until sexologists placed female affection under the umbrella of deviant homosexuality (23). Faderman then proceeds chronologically. In the 1920's, Freudian ideals gave way to experimentation and slumming in Harlem, but the idea of the compassionate marriage reinforced the stigma against lesbianism (91). The economic depression of the thirties pushed women out of the workforce, while popular images began to depict lesbians as tragic and absurd (103). The post WWII intimidation and public policy of control and containment of lesbianism forced women who loved women to deny their lesbianism (150). Finally, the radical feminism of the seventies pressured some women who were not attracted to women to become lesbians, demonstrating how the spirit of an era could influence asexual behavior in large numbers of people (207). These various economic, political, and social influences verify that sexuality is a social construct, lesbianism is made possible through societys conception of it, and the way lesbians live is determined by these changes. In describing these shifts in the conception of lesbianism and the metamorphoses of womens experiences, Faderman exposes in important trend in the history of sexuality: the push and pull of radical and conservative. One manifestation was the so-called government-sponsored lesbian subculture that was tolerated and even protected during WWII, which then gave way to the McCarthy era in which homosexuals faced severe discrimination as morally weak, emotionally unstable, and mentally ill threats to normalcy (119, 145). Another example was the 80s shift towards sexual conservatism that sprang from the radical militarism of lesbian-feminists a decade earlier (273). While these waves are hardly novel, what is significant is the way in which Faderman shows how the conservative push against the 2 Cece Spencer

phenomena actually contributed to and assisted in its development. The repression of the 30s was essential to the formation of lesbian subculture, since it helped women who identified themselves as lesbians to make a conscious and firm distinction between themselves and other women and thus to define themselves as a group (116). Even the persecution of the 50s inadvertently helped to foster selfawareness and identity among [homosexuals] (190). Despite such an ambitious chronological scope, Faderman successfully demonstrates that periods of repression and waves of conservatism were crucial in constructing lesbian identity. Faderman's work is important because it changes the understanding of conservative eras of homosexual oppression and demonstrates the complicated interplay of various factors in the construction of sexuality. It is also formidable because it recognizes the power that women who chose to love women wielded in this construction. By including numerous personal stories and interviews, Faderman takes on the voice and the experience of lesbians and how they identified, or didn't identify, themselves in the twentieth century. While history regarding homosexuality could be centered on its perception and acceptance in society, Faderman consistently examines how lesbians internalized these norms and used these socializations in constructing their own identity, in turn empowering them as historical actors. Lesbians had agency to start from scratch to formulate what the growing lesbian society should be like (161). Playing butch and femme roles, working-class lesbians of the 50s created a subculture with a conformity and security that answered longings that mirrored those of heterosexual America, in which all members of the subculture had been raised (174). This agency is especially apparent in the late sixties and early seventies during which complaints about their treatment and demands for change were articulated. While Faderman is a social constructionist, she acknowledges that lesbians themselves played a crucial role in defining their own sexual identity. As is necessary in a history of lesbians, women and lesbian are utilized ubiquitously throughout the book. However, Faderman is inconsistent in defining them and designating to whom they 3 Cece Spencer

refer. While in some cases the context is revealing, Fadermans loose employment of these two sweeping terms raises several questions: Does reference to women mean all women across race and class lines? Women of all ages? Does reference to lesbian mean women who self-identify as such or all women who love women? Who exactly is experiencing the construction of lesbian identity? Fadermans often vague use of terminology exacerbates the larger fact that she generally marginalizes the role race plays in the construction and experience of lesbianism. She consistently discusses the different experiences of lesbians in terms of class, but not of race. For example, when discussing the dawn of the century, Faderman singularly notes that American working-class women made a move into the public sphere parallel with their middle-class counterparts (38). Similarly, when she examines the Depression, Faderman employs class as the only factor affecting experience. This is also apparent in her discussion of WWII, when she notes that great numbers of females of all classes learned to appreciate other females as serious, self-sufficient human beings. In some instances it is unclear whether women of other races share the experience of the described classes or whether they are others, as is the case when she seamlessly interjects the native American woman's testimony into her examination of the fifties bar culture (170). When Faderman does engage race it is often merely to distinguish black women from the normalized white women featured in her historical survey. For example, when she frames lesbian experiences in Harlem as those of white women, she addresses the experiences of black women separately (72). Later in her discussion of the seventies, Faderman designates racial and ethnic minorities as they and them, in contrast to the women of lesbian-feminism, a predominantly white movement, whom she finally and openly identifies as such only in once minorities are discussed (240). There are two implications in Faderman's failure to consistently address the race of women and lesbians. First of all, Faderman is separating race from the intertwined conceptions of gender and class. Race undeniably affected the experience of all black women, and these experiences in turn affected those of white women. The middle-class opportunities for education and economic independence that made 4 Cece Spencer

a whole new lifestyle possible in the beginning of the twentieth century didn't apply to black women of any class (13). The economic changes in which working-class women moved from the domestic sphere to that of the public sphere that Faderman so enthusiastically emphasizes, were made possible because black women were taking over in the domestic sphere (38). Second of all, Faderman is implying that the white narrative is the dominant one. Removing women and lesbians from the racial context in which they live seems to delegitimize the experiences of ethnic and racial minorities in the history of love between women. While Fadermans imprecise use of terminology and impoverished treatment of race detract from her comprehensive history of lesbians in twentieth century America, their implications do not devalue its overall significance. These weaknesses may actually demonstrate the difficulty of addressing the history of the formation of sexual categories and sexual identity. As Faderman willingly admits, there is no such entity as "the gay" or "the lesbian" and the diversity of sexual identification renders its definition fleeting and its history messy (285). Nonetheless, Faderman successfully argues that lesbianism was a social construct and aptly lays out the integrated political, social, economic, scientific, and political forces that contributed to it. Moreover, she efficaciously tackles the complex role lesbians themselves played in this construction. By and large, in her work Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America, Faderman brings significant clarity to the factors external to sexual drive that influenced the many complex metamorphoses of lesbian life in America.

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