Different Daughters
A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement
by Marcia M. Gallo
ISBN-10: 0786716347
ISBN-13: 9780786716340
336 pages
Paperback
$25.95 US
Rights: World
Published: October 2006
About the Book
Nearly fifteen years before the Stonewall Rebellion and the birth of gay liberation, the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) was the world’s first organization committed to lesbian visibility and empowerment. Like its predominantly gay male counterpart, the Mattachine Society, DOB was launched in response to the oppressive anti-homosexual climate of the McCarthy era, when lesbian and gay people were arrested, fired from jobs, and had their children taken away simply on the basis of their sexual orientation. It was against this political backdrop that a circle of San Francisco lesbians formed a private club where lesbians could meet other lesbians in a safe, affirming setting. What began as a small social group, however, evolved over the next two decades into a national organization that counted more than a dozen chapters—and in the process, laid the foundation for today’s lesbian rights movement.
Different Daughters chronicles this movement and the women who fought the church and state in order to change not only our nation’s perception of homosexuality but how lesbians see themselves. Marcia Gallo has interviewed dozens of former DOB members, many of whom have never spoken on record. Through its leaders, its magazine, and its network of local chapters, DOB played a crucial role in creating lesbian identity, visibility, and political strategies in Cold War America.
Reviews
“Marcia Gallo’ s powerful history of the Daughters of Bilitis introduces us to pioneering Lesbian Liberators who, during the l950s, dared to challenge the bitter homophobic silence and contempt that surrounded and endangered women-loving-women for so many generations…Everybody interested in feminism, social and political history, stories of bold life journeys in mean and embattled times will be eager to read this splendid book.” —Blanche Wiesen Cook, author, Eleanor Roosevelt, Volumes One and Two
“Different Daughters is a pioneering work that at last provides us with the history of those pioneering women who founded the lesbian rights movement. The book is that rare scholarly work: a pleasure to read even as it provides essential historical information—it’ s both brilliantly researched and beautifully written.” —Martin Duberman, author, Stonewall
About Marcia Gallo
Marcia M. Gallo is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She received her PhD in history with specialization in gender and sexuality from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 2004. Her book, Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement, won the 2006 Lambda Literary Award for Nonfiction and was named one of the best books of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle.
In 2007, Gallo received the Passing the Torch Award from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY for her scholarship on feminist and lesbian activism. She is now working on a book about Catherine “Kitty” Genovese, who was murdered in Queens, New York in 1964 and became an international symbol of urban apathy, the “bystander syndrome,” and the failure of community.
A native of Wilmington, Delaware, Gallo was Field Director for the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco before entering academia. She also served as Director of Development and Donor Relations with the Funding Exchange, a network of progressive community-based foundations headquartered in New York.
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