Dykes to Watch Out For was a weekly comic strip by Alison Bechdel. The strip, which ran from 1983 to 2008, was one of the earliest ongoing representations of lesbians in popular culture and has been called "as important to new generations of lesbians as landmark novels like Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle (1973) and Lisa Alther's Kinflicks (1976) were to an earlier one". It introduced the Bechdel test, a set of criteria for determining gender bias in works of entertainment, that has since found broad application.
Candace Bushnell is an American author, journalist, and television producer. She wrote a column for The New York Observer (1994–96) that was adapted into the bestselling Sex and the City anthology. The book was the basis for the HBO hit series Sex and the City (1998–2004) and two subsequent movies.
Rita Mae Brown is an American feminist writer, best known for her coming-of-age autobiographical novel, Rubyfruit Jungle. Brown was active in a number of civil rights campaigns and criticized the marginalization of lesbians within feminist groups. Brown received the Pioneer Award for lifetime achievement at the Lambda Literary Awards in 2015.
CarolineMarie "Carrie" Bradshaw is a fictional character and the protagonist of the HBO franchise Sex and the City, portrayed by Sarah Jessica Parker. In the Sex and the City television and film series, Carrie is a columnist and fashionista who lives in New York City. Her weekly column, "Sex and the City", provides the narration for each episode.
Lesbian pulp fiction is a genre of lesbian literature that refers to any mid-20th century paperback novel or pulp magazine with overtly lesbian themes and content. Lesbian pulp fiction was published in the 1950s and 1960s by many of the same paperback publishing houses as other genres of fiction, including westerns, romances, and detective fiction. Because very little other literature was available for and about lesbians at this time, quite often these books were the only reference the public had for modeling what lesbians were. English professor Stephanie Foote commented on the importance of lesbian pulp novels to the lesbian identity prior to the rise of organized feminism: "Pulps have been understood as signs of a secret history of readers, and they have been valued because they have been read. The more they are read, the more they are valued, and the more they are read, the closer the relationship between the very act of circulation and reading and the construction of a lesbian community becomes…. Characters use the reading of novels as a way to understand that they are not alone." Joan Nestle refers to lesbian pulp fiction as “survival literature.” Lesbian pulp fiction provided representation for lesbian identities, brought a surge of awareness to lesbians, and created space for lesbian organizing leading up to Stonewall.
Lavender Menace was an informal group of lesbian radical feminists formed to protest the exclusion of lesbians and their issues from the feminist movement at the Second Congress to Unite Women in New York City on May 1, 1970. Members included Karla Jay, Martha Shelley, Rita Mae Brown, Lois Hart, Barbara Love, Ellen Shumsky, Artemis March, Cynthia Funk, Linda Rhodes, Arlene Kushner, Ellen Broidy, and Michela Griffo, and were mostly members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the National Organization for Women (NOW). They later became the Radicalesbians.
The Price of Salt is a 1952 romance novel by Patricia Highsmith, first published under the pseudonym "Claire Morgan." Highsmith—known as a suspense writer based on her psychological thriller Strangers on a Train—used an alias as she did not want to be tagged as "a lesbian-book writer", and she also used her own life references for characters and occurrences in the story.
Samantha Jones is a fictional character created by Candace Bushnell who appears in the Sex and the City media franchise. The character first appeared in Bushnell's newspaper column Sex and the City, which was published in The New York Observer from 1994 to 1996, and as a book of the same name in 1996. A semi-fictionalized version of one of Bushnell's real-life friends, Samantha is a confident and sexually liberated woman in her forties with a propensity for dating multiple men. Author Louise Perry has claimed that Samantha's character was based on a stereotypical portrayal of the life of a promiscuous gay man.
Lover is a lesbian feminist novel by Bertha Harris, published in 1976 by Daughters, Inc., a Vermont small press dedicated to women's fiction. It is considered Harris's most ambitious work, and has been compared to Djuna Barnes's Nightwood and the stories of Jane Bowles. Harris has said that it was written "straight from the libido, while I was madly in love, and liberated by the lesbian cultural movement of the mid-1970s."
Lesbian literature is a subgenre of literature addressing lesbian themes. It includes poetry, plays, fiction addressing lesbian characters, and non-fiction about lesbian-interest topics. A similar term is sapphic literature, encompassing works that feature love between women that are not necessarily lesbian.
The Furies Collective was a short-lived commune of twelve young lesbian separatists in Washington, D.C., in 1971 and 1972. They viewed lesbianism as more political than sexual, and declared heterosexual women to be an obstacle to the world revolution they sought. Their theories are still acknowledged among feminist groups.
The IHOP Papers is the debut novel of American author Ali Liebegott, and was first published on December 13, 2006, by Carroll & Graf. The story revolves around a twenty-year-old lesbian named Francesca who falls in love with her female philosophy professor in junior college. Francesca eventually moves to San Francisco in order to be with her. The novel explores Francesca's difficulty with intimate relationships, as she experiences numerous lesbian relationships in San Francisco. The title of the book is a reference to the San Franciscan IHOP restaurant where she is employed.
Lesbian portrayal in media is generally in relation to feminism, love and sexual relationships, marriage and parenting. Some writers have stated that lesbians have often been depicted as exploitative and unjustified plot devices. Common representations of lesbians in the media include butch or femme lesbians and lesbian parents. "Butch" lesbian comes from the idea of a lesbian expressing themselves as masculine by dressing masculine, behaving masculinely, or liking things that are deemed masculine, while "femme" lesbian comes from the idea of a lesbian expressing themselves as feminine by dressing feminine, behaving femininely, or liking things that are deemed feminine.
Karin Kallmaker is an American author of lesbian fiction whose works also include those originally written under the name Laura Adams. Her writings span lesbian romance, lesbian erotica, and lesbian science-fiction/fantasy. Dubbed the Queen of Lesbian Romance, she publishes exclusively in the lesbian market as a matter of personal choice.
Golden Crown Literary Society (GCLS) is an American nonprofit organization established in 2004 for those with an interest in Sapphic literature. Since 2005, GCLS has at its annual conference presented Golden Crown Literary Awards (Goldies) to authors and editors in various categories of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and anthologies/collections, as well as for cover design and audiobook narration.
Me and Rubyfruit is a short 1989/1990 videorecording by American artist Sadie Benning that runs for 5 minutes and was recorded with PixelVision camera in black and white. The title alludes to Rubyfruit Jungle, a 1973 novel by Rita Mae Brown that has explicitly lesbian themes.
Carol is a 2015 historical drama romance film directed by Todd Haynes. The screenplay by Phyllis Nagy is based on the 1952 romance novel The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith. The film stars Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Sarah Paulson, Jake Lacy, and Kyle Chandler. Set in 1950s New York City, the story is about a forbidden affair between an aspiring female photographer and an older woman going through a difficult divorce.
June Arnold was an American novelist and publisher, known for her novel Sister Gin and the posthumous novel Baby Houston. Arnold's writing, such as Sister Gin, and the books she published through her press, Daughters, Incorporated, focused on telling the stories of lesbian lives and relationships.
Southern Discomfort is a 1982 novel by Rita Mae Brown. Through comedy and farce, it explores the theme of hypocrisy, especially that based on social status.
Tiffany Reisz is an American author. She is best known for the Original Sinners series of erotica and she has won the RITA Award and a Lambda Literary Award.
