From Sinister Feminism to the Lavender Menace: The Lesbian Body in the Suffrage and Feminist Movements

• In Event: Historical Transgressions: Lessons for Seeking Contemporary Social Justice

Abstract

This paper explores the role of the lesbian body in the anti-suffrage and anti-feminist discourse of the suffrage movement of the 1910s and the feminist movement of the 1960s-1970s. Despite the decades that separate the two movements, vitriolic homophobia appears in both campaigns as a method of fear for discrediting and delegitimizing the political and social demands of women. While the anti-lesbian anti-feminist discourse is much more transparent, the anti-suffrage material is as homophobic, especially in the many cartoons the movements generated. In addition to denying women the legitimacy of their protests, homophobia discourse questioned the “normalcy” of those women. Despite a half century span between these two movements, it is clear that identifying lesbians and the lesbian body as the abject “Other” reveal the deep fears that both stirred—the transformation of the gender and the disruptions to the power and privilege it maintains.

Presenter

• Ann Marie Nicolosi, The College of New Jersey