In the first book to analyze shifts in lesbian identity,
consciousness, and culture from the 1970s to the 1990s, Arlene
Stein contributes an important chapter to the study of the women's
movement and ...offers a revealing portrait of the exchange between a
radical generation of feminists and its successors. Tracing the
evolution of the lesbian movement from the bar scene to the growth
of alternative families, Stein illustrates how a generation of
women transformed the woman-centered ideals of feminism into a
culture and a lifestyle. Sex and Sensibility relates the
development of a "queer" sensibility in the 1990s to the foundation
laid by the gay rights and feminist movements a generation earlier.
Beginning with the stories of thirty women who came of age at the
climax of the 70s women's movement-many of whom defined lesbianism
as a form of resistance to dominant gender and sexual norms-Stein
explores the complex issues of identity that these women confronted
as they discovered who they were and defined themselves in relation
to their communities and to society at large. Sex and
Sensibility ends with interviews of ten younger women, members
of the post-feminist generation who have made it a fashion to
dismiss lesbian feminism as overly idealistic and reductive.
Enmeshed in Stein's compelling and personal narrative are
coming-out experiences, questions of separatism, work, desire,
children, and family. Stein considers the multiple identities of
women of color and the experiences of intermittent and "ex"
lesbians. Was the lesbian feminist experiment a success? What has
become of these ideas and the women who held them? In answering
these questions, Stein illustrates the lasting and profound effect
that the lesbian feminist movement had, and continues to have, on
contemporary women's definitions of sexual identity.
Pero para llegar a tener el reconocimiento y la aceptación que hoy goza la comunidad, se han sorteado caminos escabrosos de duras luchas en contra de lo establecido, largas jornadas en protesta y, ...lamentablemente, como suele pasar en la historia de nuestro país, mucho, pero mucho derramamiento de sangre... No fue sino hasta el 2 de octubre 1978, durante una marcha conmemorativa de la matanza de Tlatelolco, que un grupo de activistas homosexuales pertenecientes al Frente Homosexual de Acción Revolucionaria (FHAR), el Grupo Lambda de Liberación Homosexual y el Grupo Autónomo de Lesbianas Oikabeth, se sumaron como un contingente politizado haciendo pública su imagen y postura, sin embargo, entre los mismos movimientos de izquierda progresistas de aquel entonces, también existía un cierto rechazo hacia la homosexualidad que devino, lamentablemente, en una minimización de sus exigencias políticas. Así, los movimientos y los activismos se fueron nutriendo de otras expresiones contraculturales y de resistencias, como los movimientos gay anglosajones o el activismo negro, entre otros.
