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and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive Audre Lorde, “A Litany for Survival” |
For what is life but reaching for an answer? And what is death but a refusal to grow? Mary Oliver, “Magellan” |
for Jo
who spoke so that we might live instead of just survive and was the first to speak to me of our history …
who spoke so that we might live instead of just survive and was the first to speak to me of our history …
Abstract.
This study is the first to document the history of the lesbian sadomasochist (SM) community and demonstrates its impact of the feminist Sex Wars in the United States between 1969 and 1993. Bringing together foundational literature and methods of inquiry from women’s studies, queer theory and the history of other excluded social groups, my dissertation highlights issues of power, resistance and collective identity formation. Drawing on newspaper articles and other published sources, archival research and oral histories, I argue that one cannot understand the history of movements for gender, sexual and sexuality equality without also understanding this issue. This project charts the evolution of feminist sexual theory from the 1960s through the 1990s, illuminates ruptures in feminist and gay/lesbian liberation theory and practice and reveals the history and the long-lasting implications of these debates. I show how lesbian SM helped to shape the pornography debates, the development of both queer theory and the field of sexuality studies and was integral to major shifts in American politics and culture in the last two decades of the twentieth century.
