A Queer History of the United States (ReVisioning History Book 1)

by Michael Bronski

Anthropologist Esther Newton notes that the concept of the masculine woman who loves other women made emotional sense to both homosexuals and heterosexuals, because it played into the popular idea that if sexual desire is masculine, then a woman who desires a woman must be mannish.19 Lillian Faderman argues that the mannish lesbian was a break from the concept of romantic friendship, because her masculinity gave her access to sexuality. This new step in how mainstream culture understood sexual attraction between women made the concept of the romantic friendship—so integral to personal and social acceptance of both female and male same-sex relationships—impossible.20 The mannish lesbian was also used in the popular imagination to “explain,” as well as demonize, the new twentieth-century woman who was active in the public sphere, including the suffragette. The mannish lesbian was not, however, conflated with the well-known concept of the “passing woman”—a woman who dressed to pass as a man, like the Civil War soldiers—which was understood as a masquerade, not an identity.