Opengender

As a result of the medicalisation process, lesbianism had been available as an articulable identification prior to the 1940s but conditions had not existed for the formation of substantial lesbian communities. Faderman saw the context of the two World Wars, and especially the aftermath of World War II, as crucially productive in the formation of visible, lesbian, urban-subcultures:

World War II in particular brought great numbers of females of all classes into a society of women where they were able not only to expand friendships but to learn to appreciate other females as serious, self-sufficient human beings ... not long after Freud, The Well of Loneliness, and the term "lesbian" became household words ... [women's] lives were much more open to lesbian possibilities than they could have been earlier. Since World War II also brought large numbers of women to big cities, ... finally relatively large lesbian communities could be created. (Faderman, 1991: 121)

Furthermore, the practical clothing which had been coded as virilising by sexologists during the opening decades of this century (Faderman, 1981 314-331; and 1991: 37-61) had became more acceptable to the wider culture, partly as a result of World War II. Until the 1940s, it had constituted a scandal for a woman to wear trousers in public:

"Innocent bystanders gasped in amazement to see ... Greta Garbo striding swiftly along Hollywood Boulevard dressed in men's clothes." (Faderman, 1991: 125, quoting Harrison Carrol's commentary, "Miss Dietrich Defends Use of Pants," in World Telegram, January 17, 1932, on a newspaper headline quoted by Mercedes de Acosta in Here Lies the Heart, 1968; reprinted Arno Press, 1975, NY, p.229)

In the 1940s, however, women had been obliged to wear trousers in the munitions factories and in other wartime jobs. Thus, not only did World War II create the economic conditions for the emergence of modern urban lesbian subcultures, it also influenced the stylisation of lesbian identity:

In addition to the changing attitudes about what constituted morality, the war also contributed to an easier formation and development of a distinctive lesbian "style" because it made pants acceptable garb for women ... The lesbian who loathed dresses felt much freer to wear pants out of doors than she had in the prewar years. Pants soon became costume and a symbol that allowed women who defined themselves as lesbians to identify one another. (Faderman, 1991: 125-6)

During the 1940s, the lesbian dress code "announced them as lesbians to their neighbours, to strangers on the streets, and of course to all those who entered the bars" (Davis and Kennedy, 1986: 8).

In the fifties, with the increased visibility of the established gay community ... the street dyke emerged. (Davis and Kennedy, 1986: 8)

Most commentators noted the "prominence of butch-fem roles" in these subcultures (Davis and Kennedy, 1986: 13; citing Martin and Lyon, 1972; Lorde, 1979; D'Emilio, 1983; Nestle, 1987). Although this visual coding of lesbianism is now more usually associated specifically with the figure of the butch, anecdotal evidence tends to suggest that "at times femmes dressed similarly to their butch lovers (Nestle, 1986: 102); and that "you can't tell butch-fem by people's dress. You couldn't even really tell in the fifties" (13). That is, to the heterosexual world, both butch and femme undifferentiatedly registered as 'dykes.'

Davis and Kennedy argued, however, that this lesbian-coded environment was also constitutive of lesbian sexual identity and that it was lesbian sexuality, as much as a confrontation with dominant culture, which was organised by signifiers of role-playing:

It is the nature of this community that it created public space for lesbians and gay men, while at the same time it organized sexuality and emotional relationships. (Davis and Kennedy, 1986: 9)

Sexual autonomy for women nevertheless still depended crucially on economic autonomy from men and, at least to some extent, could only be imagined in terms of male privilege. It is, perhaps, difficult to make an effective distinction between sexual and social or economic autonomy:

The rebel lifestyle, in which these women as lesbians demanded some of the social privileges and customs ordinarily reserved for men, ... challenged social orthodoxies about sexuality in the 1950s and 60s ... (Faderman, 1991: 164)

Some of Davis and Kennedy's respondents did, however, see mannishness as confrontational and as having laid the foundations for gay liberation rather than as contributing to the stigmatisation of lesbians:

Things back then were horrible, and I think that because I fought like a man to survive I made it somehow easier for the kids coming out today. (Davis and Kennedy, 1986: 8)

By the 1950s, more formalised lesbian organisations had developed, leading to a public articulation of dissent among lesbians over the conceptualisation and stylisation of lesbian identification.

The decade following the war that expanded the potential of lesbian life-styles did see the formation of the first lesbian organization in America, Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), which was originally founded as a private social group to give middle-class lesbians an alternative to the gay bar scene. (Faderman, 1991: 148-9)

DOB did not long remain a social group, but politicised around demanding lesbian rights and "improving the lesbian image" (Faderman, 1991: 149 quoting a personal interview with Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon in San Francisco, August 14, 1987). "Image improvement" was seen in terms of aligning lesbian style with heterosexual norms in style and dress and an avoidance of those confrontational codes which proclaimed the existence of urban lesbian subcultures.

Some middle-class lesbians complained that it was butches and their femmes who made lesbians outcasts. One of the earliest issues of The Ladder proclaimed: "The kids in fly front pants and with butch haircuts and mannish manner are the worst publicity that we can get." (Faderman, 1991: 180, quoting The Ladder (1958) 3:1, p.30)

Whilst all agreed that the visual stylisation of lesbianism led to confrontation with the dominant order, there were differences in strategy. Most commentators appear to have linked these differences with class position. On the one hand, Nestle (1987) saw the visibility of the bar cultures as a working class "flag of rebellion" (100):

The butch-femme couple embarrassed other Lesbians (and still does) because they made Lesbians culturally visible, a terrifying act for the 1950s. (Nestle, 1987: 101)

Whilst on the other:

[The Ladder's readership] believed that unpopular forms of overt self-expression such as wearing masculine garb led not only to danger for lesbians, but also to further alienation from the parent culture, which was especially painful during a time when the middle-class lesbian culture was still in a relatively inchoate form. (Faderman, 1991: 180)

Jeffreys (1985) argued that, on the contrary, the association of role-playing with working-class lesbians was "not well substantiated and could lead to the creation of false stereotypes of the working class butch or femme" (Jeffreys, 1985: 78). Faderman, however, held that whilst there were role-playing lesbians among the middle-classes this was uncommon, and conflict over the issue between blue-collar bar culture and white-collar assimilationist cultures was documented:

Statistical studies of lesbian couples during the period also concluded that middle- and upper-middle class lesbians preferred to blend in with heterosexual society in terms of their styles ... [and that] "role is more enforced [among lesbians] in the blue collar and lower white collar classes". (Faderman, 1991: 181; quoting Suzanne Prosin, "The Concept of the Lesbian: A Minority in Reverse" in The Ladder, July, 6:10, pp.5-22)

At the same time, the political environment for more confrontational forms of female rebellion was becoming increasingly harsh. The popularisation of Freudianism in the United States during the 1950s had focused public anxiety concerning female emancipation and homosexuality (Faderman, 1991: 130-134). The upheavals of the Wartime period had led to a compensatory conservatism in American society.

The "homosexual" became a particular target of persecution in America. He or she presented an uncomfortable challenge to the mood that longed for obedience to an illusion of uncomplicated "morality". (Faderman, 1991: 140)

During the era of the McCarthy 'witch-hunts' (the investigations of the House Committee on Un-American Activities), homosexuals were associated with subversive threats to the United States and were harassed and persecuted (Faderman, 1991: 141-148; Rubin, 1984: 270). As a result, lesbian sub-cultures went underground. "Lesbians often felt they could not trust close acquaintances with knowledge of their personal lives, even if they suspected those acquaintances might also be lesbian" (Faderman, 1991: 148). For lesbians (and gays), any relation to popular culture would have to be effected through the clandestine transmission of those codes which had come to constitute the visibility of their sub-cultures.