Awfully Devoted Women: Lesbian Lives in Canada, 1900-65

Sexuality Studies

by Cameron Duder

The lives of lesbians who grew up before 1965 remain cloaked in mystery. Historians have illuminated the worlds of upper-middle-class "romantic friends" and working-class butch and femme women who frequented lesbian bars in the ’50s and ’60s. The majority of lesbians, however, were lower-middle-class women who hid their sexual identity by engaging in discreet social and sexual relationships.

Drawing on correspondence, interviews, journals, and newspaper articles, Awfully Devoted Women offers a nuanced portrait of the lives of middle-class lesbians in the decades before the gay rights movement in English-Canada. Accounts and explorations of these women’s sexual practices, thoughts on same-sex desire, and relations with friends and family unveil a world of private relationships, house parties, and discreet social networks. This intimate study of the lives of women forced to love in secret not only challenges the idea that lesbian relationships in the past were asexual, it also reveals the courage it took for women to explore desire in an era when they were supposed to know little about sexuality.

Awfully Devoted Women is the first book-length study of lesbian sexuality, relationships, and community in Canada before 1965. It will be of interest to students and practitioners of Canadian history and women’s studies and to anyone interested in the history of sexuality.

Genres: Nonfiction, LGBT, History, Queer, Canada, Lesbian

288 pages, Hardcover

First published April 14, 2010

Reviews

[Janine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book does a very good job of illustrating and detailing the lives of (white settler) lesbians. Lots of queer histories I’ve read tend to focus on the timeline of when gay bars or communities centres closed and opened. Or would describe the first pride parade in a city and though that’s important knowledge, “Awfully Devoted Women” talks about lesbian life outside of exclusively queer settings. It covered topics such as how queer women met, the language they used to self identify, and the evolution of compulsory heterosexuality and the how lesbianism slowly began to be seen as pathological.

[Wrlccywrlir · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those academic texts that's just way too repetitive... author, how many times do you need to repeat the line about how middle class lesbians preferred to stay away from the bars? The first part of the book doesn't have as bad a problem with this compared to the second part, at least. In the foreword, the author talks about not being that motivated to finish writing this book, and yeah, it kinda feels evident, although I might not have guessed without that being written outright. (Mostly due to being distracted by the repetitiveness.)

I was going to say that it might be better to skip this book (or at least its second half), and just look into the Lesbians Making History interviews that were used, but flipping through the intro again, more than half of the interviews used were done by the author, so Duder did do some good work, and there are some very interesting stories here, but at times, this book is just so annoying! Maybe I'm exaggerating too much, but then maybe you will go on to read this book and then think to yourself, "oh it's not as bad as that person on GR said it was" and then I suppose that will be a win for you, and you will be able to enjoy this book properly.

Also, one of the most interesting things about this book is that there's a part where an interview subject describes herself as "soft butch"! (Page 194) People like to act as if this term was something created online as a "joke", but here it's being used in an interview from 1997, by a woman born in 1931. Make of that what you will.

[MichelinaNeri · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little too academic in style to be a fun read, but the stories that Cameron Duder has gathered of the lives of women in Canada in the time period are incredible - equal parts charming and devastating.

[Tiff · Rating 5 out of 5]

So well done. Review to come.