Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
Taking up where her 1981 classic, Surpassing the Love of Men, left off, Lillian Faderman reveals that many of the early leaders who fought for women's suffrage, higher education for women, and women's entrance into "male" professions would in today's parlance be called lesbians: "women who lived in committed relationships with other women." Unencumbered by the duties of marriage and motherhood, they were more likely to have the time, energy, and freedom to work for women's rights. In fact, they were more or less obliged to try to better women's lives, Faderman argues, for there was no man to represent them at the polls or support them financially. (Although Elizabeth Cady Stanton's husband and seven children failed to distract her from the cause, her friend Susan B. Anthony used to help her with the children and housework before they settled down for political strategy meetings.) During the Depression, when women's social and economic gains began to dwindle, it was these "single" women who kept professions open while married women were being fired in favor of men. Faderman gracefully surveys a century of advancement and retreat, shedding light on America's debt to women-loving women. --Regina Marler
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Excellent addition to my bookshelf
Customer Rating:
Lillian Faderman is, hands down, THE best researcher and writer of lesbian American history EVER. I own a copy of all her books; each gets better than the last. And this one continues the trend -- it is simply wonderful. A great read and an important historical document.
Superb book for feminists of all sexualities
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A heterosexual feminist ally, I picked up this book at the suggestion of a friend, and was entranced by the premise of the book and meticulously researched evidence.
Precisely because they were not bound by unintended pregnancy (which continued to be a problem until the early 70's)Lesbians were the vanguard of the women's movement on everything from equal employment to the vote and birth control, and had an obligation to work towards policies that would benefit all women regardless of sexuality.
Granted some readers of the reviews will decide that this book attempts to glorify lesbians at the expense of straight women, but I have read this book repeatedly and simply find the truth as it existed in historical context. Faderman simply points out the important role that Lesbians have played---a contribution that gets over shaddowed in many straight women's and gay men's focused history books.
Outstanding Reminder of the VALUE of women
Customer Rating:
in our country. For lesbians, to be reminded that sisters took the first steps to freeing all women, to straight women who need to remember that we are all the same under the jeans... I couldn't help but be struck with an intense understanding that all the freedoms so far won for women began with a group of women willing to be unique in a world that doesn't celebrate individuality. A bit "dry" in places, still a valuable book for people to understand humanity at a new level.
Truly Amazed
Customer Rating:
This is one of the finest books written on lesbians I have ever read...and I have read them all. I recommend it to anyone interested in the stories of the past that will shape our future.
more of the same, please
Customer Rating:
We need to hear these stories. We need to tell these stories to our daughters. In my opinion, the important thing is not the sexuality of the woman at the center of the story -- it's the life she led. I don't want to be remembered primarily as gay or straight (that's nobody else's business but mine), but as somebody who accomplished something I believed in. And I'd wager that these women felt the same way.
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