Female homosexuality in the early 1980s. Anybody know anything about that?

[vanitashaze]

I've searched through my library and used my meagre Google-fu to no avail, so I'm putting this out here: Does anyone know anything about female homosexuality - attitudes about lesbians from straight people, attitudes about lesbians from lesbians, culture, dress/mannerisms, etc. - in the late 1970s to mid 1980s? Keeping in mind, the characters I'm juggling are working- to lower-middle-class women in rural areas who wouldn't be involved (or possibly, even all that aware/concerned with) the women's movement or the gay rights movement, and who come from close-knit, probably conservative - but not necessarily Christian - families. They're probably not going to be "out" in any way, and they're staying in the above-described communities, not moving into places with a gay... er, area? Scene? Whatever, you get it.

Also, bisexuality, particularly female bisexuality. What was happening with the attitudes towards that, both within the gay community and the larger society? I know this was the beginning of the bisexual backlash among the male gay community, but information about female homosexuality is (unsurprisingly) sparse, and female homosexuality outside of the context of the lesbian community / gay rights movement / women's movement is even sparser.

Meta or personal experiences welcomed with gratitude, but I'll also take recs for any movies, books, tv shows, or pretty much anything else you can think of that's relevant and set in this period. (Thanks!)

Comments

[wordsatourbacks]

Kind of doubt this'll help (sorry!) but off the top of my head: tags for lgbtq_recs (including two masterlists), tags for queerlit50, glbt tag for 50books_poc, lgbt tag for 12films_poc.

[vanitashaze]

Better than nothing, right? I'll go trawling but I'm simultaneously exhausted with and kind of scared of GLBTQAI literature; so much of it seems exclusively and somewhat tediously focused on, well, the GLBTQAI aspects of the characters' lives, which is often taken to extremes. ARGH ARGH ARGH. But that's more personal issues than a literary criticism, per se, though of course the former certainly informs the latter.

[wordsatourbacks]

gay_also_means_happy is just getting off the ground, but if you haven't seen it before, there are four recs so far in that community. (I keep meaning to put up links there to a couple of awesome reviews for an awesome film with a happy ending - a movie in which as I recall everyone is a person of color, and this is the default! - about two Chinese American lesbians who navigate a relationship after falling in love. It's called Saving Face, and if you haven't seen it, I recommend it: funny and sexy and complex. Not all focused on lesbian identity, either; there's a couple of other important plots going on at the same time, which start off being related in the very realistic sense that the protagonist has more than one significant dynamic going on in her life - with friends, family, work - and so do the other people involved, and then develop further in an eventually-happy-but-still-complicated way.)

There are a number of recs for works (based on reviews, anyway - I have not read or watched most of them myself) at the 50books_poc and 12films_poc tags that aren't exclusively focused on being GLBTQAI - I think at the very least Malinda Lo's lesbian Cinderella Ash, Love & Rockets, Noel Alumit's Letters to Montgomery Clift, some works by Jackie Kay, works by Samuel Delany, and at least Nina's Heavenly Delights and D.E.B.S. on the film side. Though the works I've named won't help you for your query in this entry! There are only 35 entries total in queerlit50 so far; there's a chunk of recs by queer authors of works that aren't explicitly about queerness, there's another chunk of recs explicitly focused on queerness (not sure about exclusively), and there's a much smaller number of recs with queer protagonists that aren't exclusively focused on issues of navigating queer identity, yeah. I am not sure how I feel about lgbtq_recs (... there are so many reasons not to rec Dan Savage), but there's enough of a variety of recs and a high enough volume of recs that you can probably run across stuff suiting your general interests. But most likely not your query about female homosexuality in the 1980s, I'm afraid.

[vanitashaze]

Probably not, but thanks for the recs, anyway; perhaps I will find something I'll enjoy! And yeah, I've heard of Saving Face, and have been idly keeping an eye out for it in my area. (No luck yet.)

Also, lesbian Cinderella? FUCK YEAH, I AM SO THERE. Especially if it deals with the rather patriarchal ideals of the original legend.

[wordsatourbacks]

From a not-really-spoilery review of Ash: "There's not much detail given of people's reactions to the [lesbian] relationship, but it appears to be set in one of those worlds were being gay or lesbian is unremarkable. Certainly, there's no mention of a backlash to them, and Ash doesn't go through any sort of sexual identity crisis."

Also, lesbian Cinderella? FUCK YEAH, I AM SO THERE. Especially if it deals with the rather patriarchal ideals of the original legend.

Other reviews (spoilers under cuts)... "Aisling, also called Ash, is devastated when her mother dies. Things only get worse when her father dies as well, leaving her in the hands of her stepmother Isobel. Isobel forces Ash to pay off her father's debts through servitude, and eventually Ash is serving as gardener, housekeeper and lady's maid to Isobel and her social-climbing daughter Ana. Ash's only solace is the Woods... where she meets both a fairy man who knew her mother, and the King's Huntress, Kaisa, who shares her love of the Wood and of fairy stories and who sees past her withdrawn demeanor."

[nekosensei]

Hey! If you don't have any luck here, you could also try asking these questions on an LJ community called little_details. They are very good at answering questions like this!

[vanitashaze]

Hmm. Will go check this out. Thank you!