1 Excerpted from Sharon Dale Stone, ed., Lesbians in Canada, © 1990 Between The Lines. ISBN 978-0-92128-429-1. First published in 1990 by Between The Lines.
2 On heterosexuality as an institution, see “Not for Lesbians Only” and “Learning from Lesbian Separatism” in Charlotte Bunch, Passionate Politics: Feminist Theory in Action (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987); Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 5 (Summer 1980), pp. 631–637; Janice Raymond, A Passion for Friends: Toward a Philosophy of Female Affection (London: The Women’s Press, 1986).
3 Lesbianism is conspicuously absent from high-school curricula, and if lesbianism is discussed at all in university courses it is generally in abnormal psychology or sociology of deviance courses; even then, only male homosexuality is usually mentioned.
4 There is a great deal of evidence that never-married old women lead happy and fulfilling lives, including busy social lives. See, for example, Barbara Levy Simon, Never Married Women (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), and Jeanette Auger’s chapter in this book. On the attitudes of contemporary Canadian teenage girls, see Myrna Kostash, No Kidding: Inside the World of Teenage Girls (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1987).
5 See Rosemary Curb and Nancy Manahan (eds.), Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence (Tallahassee, Fl: Naiad, 1985). The book includes Canadian contributions.
6 For example, the work of Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1978), and Dorothy Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and the Human Malaise (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).
7 See Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage (New York. Harper & Row, 1977).
8 Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,” in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 1 (Autumn 1975), pp, 1–19. There is every reason to assume that relations within and between the sexes were similar in early Canadian society.
9 Lillian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love between Women from the Renaissance to the Present (New York: William Morrow, 1981); also her article “The Morbidification of Love between Women by 19th-Century Sexologists,” In Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 4 (Fall 1978), pp. 73–89.
10 Christina Simmons, “Companionate Marriage and the Lesbian Throat,” in Frontiers: A Journal of Women‘s Studies, Vol. 4 (Lesbian History Issue, Fall 1979), pp. 54–59.
11 See, for example, Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating (New York: E.P. Burton, 1974), also Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (Freedom, Cal.: The Crossing Press, 1983).
12 This is not to say that there are no lesbians who hate men. It must be remembered, though, that there are many heterosexual women who also hate men. That lesbians are singled out and stereotyped as man-haters is an indication of the lengths to which conventional society will go to keep women in line.
1 Excerpted from Sharon Dale Stone, ed., Lesbians in Canada, © 1990 Between The Lines. ISBN 978-0-92128-429-1. First published in 1990 by Between The Lines.