Putting the Femme in Feminist: Trans Feminism and the 'Male Lesbian' in the American Second Wave.
A slur, a joke or a post‐structuralist case of mistaken identity. To the extent that the male lesbian has been discussed, she has figured dismissively. Yet throughout the period historicised as American feminism's second wave, potentially thousands of trans femmes organised under this identity. Desp...
| Published in: | Gender & History Vol. 38; no. 2; pp. 680 - 693 |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Article |
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Wiley-Blackwell
Jul2026
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=195362527&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 195362527 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 09535233 BPJ jtl: Gender & History issn: 09535233 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Jul2026 vid: 38 iid: 2 pid: 480 pub: Wiley-Blackwell artinfo: ui: 195362527 10.1111/1468-0424.12838 ppf: 680 ppct: 13 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: C – @attributes: type: P size: 817KB tig: atl: Putting the Femme in Feminist: Trans Feminism and the 'Male Lesbian' in the American Second Wave. aug: au: Pihlak, Aino Cousens, Emily affil: History, University of Toronto, Toronto Ontario,, Canada Northeastern University, London,, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland su: Male feminists Lesbian feminism Trans women Lesbians Feminism Societies sug: subj: Male feminists Lesbian feminism Trans women Lesbians Feminism Societies ab: A slur, a joke or a post‐structuralist case of mistaken identity. To the extent that the male lesbian has been discussed, she has figured dismissively. Yet throughout the period historicised as American feminism's second wave, potentially thousands of trans femmes organised under this identity. Despite being entirely overlooked in scholarship, the lesbian feminism articulated by a community of femme‐for‐femme trans femmes in the 1970s constitutes one of the most enduring and intellectually significant subsets of lesbian feminism to come out of the second wave. That they have yet to be historicised and theorised represents an injustice at the level of epistemology itself, wherein trans women are able to speak as trans, but not as lesbians. Reconstructing the archive of trans lesbian feminism that was developed by Sally Douglas in 1970 and then popularised through her organisation the Salmacis Society the year after, this article proposes that the existence of Salmacis disrupts dominant ideas of necessary antagonisms between 'trans' and 'lesbian' in the 1970s, and we highlight how the distinctly trans, sex‐positive, lesbian femme‐inism of the organisation can reanimate lesbian feminism today. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Gender & History is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Gender & History holder: Wiley-Blackwell dt: @attributes: year: 2026 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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