Journal of Lesbian Studies

ISSN: 1089-4160 (Print) 1540-3548 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wjls20

A “Labor from the Heart”

Jan Whitt

To cite this article: Jan Whitt (2001) A “Labor from the Heart”, Journal of Lesbian Studies, 5:1-2,
229-251, DOI: 10.1300/J155v05n01_15

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1300/J155v05n01_15

Published online: 12 Oct 2008.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 106

Citing articles: 2 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=wjls20
 REGULAR ARTICLE

A ‘‘Labor from the Heart’’:

Lesbian Magazines from 1947-1994
Jan Whitt

SUMMARY. While it is true that publications targeted to gay males

historically were glossier, had more consistent advertising income, and
claimed higher circulations than lesbian periodicals, the number of lesbian
newsletters, newspapers, and magazines grew significantly during the
nearly 50 years covered in this study.
This study chronicles that origin, growth and disappearance of four
significant lesbian publications--Vice Versa, The Ladder, Focus: A Journal
for Lesbians, and Sinister Wisdom--from 1947 to 1994. These magazines
illustrate varied genre in lesbian publishing history and represent three
distinctly different geographical areas. They also span almost five decades
during the inauspicious beginning and rapid growth of the lesbian press.
This study argues that lesbian publications, although often tied to politi-
cally active organizations, existed primarily to help individual lesbians
come to terms with a homophobic world and to provide social connections
and essential support systems. Less financially secure than their counter-
parts in the gay male magazine industry, lesbian publications were labors
of love and rarely survived. [Article copies available for a fee from The
Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: <getinfo@
haworthpressinc.com> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> E 2001 by
The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]

KEYWORDS. Women’s studies, media history, lesbian-gay periodi-

cals, print media history, alternative media
Until recently, the gay and lesbian press has been neglected by
media scholars (even those specializing in the history of alternative
E 2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 229
230 LESBIAN STUDIES IN AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

media),1 although it shares with African-American, Native-American,

and feminist publications numerous ideologies and goals. The over-
sight is particularly ironic in light of the sheer number of gay-lesbian
publications and readers. By the late 1980s, total circulation for gay
publications in America had topped one million; in the 1990s, approx-
imately 850 publications boasted more than two million subscribers.2
While it is true that publications targeted to gay males historically
were glossier, had more consistent advertising income, and claimed
higher circulations than lesbian periodicals, the number of lesbian
newsletters, newspapers, and magazines also grew significantly dur-
ing the nearly 50 years covered in this study.
However, according to Our Own Voices: A Directory of Lesbian
and Gay Periodicals, the total circulation of the lesbian press in 1975
was only 50,000, less than the readership of The Advocate alone. Gay
male publications at the time claimed 150,000 subscribers.3 In his
1995 book Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in
America, Rodger Streitmatter writes, ‘‘By the mid-1970s, the gay
male press was becoming a financially lucrative institution; while the
lesbian press remained a labor of love--and impoverishment.’’4
It is important not to measure the impact of the lesbian press in
terms of circulation figures and profit margins, though, nor should it
be diminished with a simplistic comparison to the gay male press.
Joan Nestle, founder of Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York, has
argued persuasively that the impact of the lesbian press ‘‘cannot be
measured in mere numbers.’’ An omen of an approaching revolution,
early lesbian publications altered forever the lives of women living in
what Nestle calls ‘‘isolated communities from coast to coast.’’5
This study chronicles the origin, growth, and disappearance of four
significant lesbian publications--Vice Versa, The Ladder, Focus: A
Journal for Lesbians, and Sinister Wisdom--from 1947 to 1994. These
magazines illustrate varied genres in lesbian publishing history and
represent three distinctly different geographical areas. As symbols of
the efforts of lesbian journalists and creative writers, these four publi-
cations represent the mimeographed newsletters, news and issues
magazines, literary journals, and activist publications that had begun
to gain a loyal readership. Furthermore, they symbolize emerging
lesbian communities on the West Coast, in the East, and in the Deep
South, and they span almost five decades during the inauspicious
beginning and rapid growth of the lesbian press.
 Jan Whitt 231

Secondly, the study examines their raison d’etre and traces their
achievements, placing them in a broader cultural context. It separates
their influence from that of dominant lesbian news magazines, such as
Lesbian Tide, more erotic publications, such as Bad Attitude, Lesbian
Contradiction, or On Our Backs, and newspapers, such as Lavender
Woman. In spite of its emphasis on the contributions and tireless work
of the founders and editors of Vice Versa, The Ladder, Focus: A Jour-
nal for Lesbians, and Sinister Wisdom, this study also acknowledges
two important facts: (1) The editors of these publications were usually
white and were concerned with representing their own interests, and
(2) the publications often floundered because of dissension among the
editors as much as because of the lack of advertising support or a
reliable circulation base.
Finally, although a few gay publications profoundly influenced
public policy (especially during the 1960s), this study argues that
lesbian newsletters and magazines, although often tied to politically
active organizations, existed primarily to help individual lesbians
come to terms with a homophobic world and to provide social connec-
tions and essential support systems. Less financially secure than their
counterparts in the gay male magazine industry, it remained true that
lesbian publications were labors of love and rarely survived.
Vice Versa, The Ladder, Focus: A Journal for Lesbians, and Sinister
Wisdom were designed to provide a forum for lesbians who, before
they set out to change the world, sought to believe in themselves and
in each other. Certainly, magazines such as The Ladder listed news
events and promoted rallies and other gatherings that both united the
lesbian community and spawned activism. However, the primary
goals of The Ladder and its sister publications were support for a new
and fragile lesbian community and encouragement for isolated, clos-
eted lesbians scattered across the nation.
Providing education, encouraging positive self-identity, spurring
political action, and building community motivated editors of early
gay magazines, such as ONE and Mattachine Review,6 just as these
goals motivated editors of other alternative media. However, there are
also significant differences between the gay-lesbian press and alterna-
tive media. Streitmatter argues that gay publications differed from
other alternative media in six ways: (1) their emphasis on design;
(2) their use of visual images; (3) their high level of internal-editorial
discord; (4) their merging of advertising and editorial content; (5) their
232 LESBIAN STUDIES IN AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

desire to inform and amuse; and (6) their use of language unique to
their community, language ‘‘largely unintelligible to heterosexual so-
ciety.’’7
In some ways, the lesbian press offers an even more striking con-
trast to alternative publications. For example, lesbian editors and writ-
ers could not agree about whether it was more advantageous for indi-
vidual lesbians to assimilate into the existing culture or to rebel against
it. Such ideological differences understandably led to disastrous in-
fighting and fragmented editorial purpose. And although they pro-
vided an open forum for diverse voices, as did the alternative press,
early lesbian publications began as social conduits, not as catalysts for
broad social activism.
Furthermore, advertisers shunned the publications, since they repre-
sented small circulations among women struggling for economic
equality and since they contained what some advertisers considered
immoral content. Newsstand sales for lesbian publications were un-
thinkable in the 1940s and 1950s.
Just as damaging to the survival of lesbian publications was the fact
that even during the social revolution of the 1960s--ostensibly a period
when the work of lesbian editors and writers would appear less radi-
cal--the lesbian press found only sparse acceptance in mainstream
women’s publications, and lesbians continued to be seen as a politi-
cally and economically weak subgroup of the feminist movement.
Lesbians found little acceptance by publications they assumed
would be sympathetic to their cause or by mainstream ones. Hetero-
sexual feminists, on the other hand, found homes in New Left media
during the 1960s and in their own periodicals in the late 1960s and
early 1970s. By the late 1970s, feminist issues began making their way
into popular women’s magazines as well. As Maurine Beasley and
Sheila Gibbons write in Taking Their Place: A Documentary History
of Women and Journalism, five feminist publications in 1968 grew to
228 newsletters, newspapers, and magazines by 1971. By 1973, there
were 560 feminist publications, including Ms., and they often imitated
the ‘‘confrontational tone of leftist underground newspapers,’’8 write
Beasley and Gibbons. Still, feminists did not necessarily embrace
lesbian concerns.
In addition, mainstream newspapers ignored lesbian issues in their
women’s pages during the 1950s and 1960s and in their thinly dis-
guised ‘‘lifestyle’’ pages during the 1970s. ‘‘Lesbian issues, alterna-
 Jan Whitt 233

tives to conventional marriage, and feminism as it affected women of

color fit poorly, if at all, within the confines of lifestyle/women’s
pages,’’9 write Beasley and Gibbons.
In spite of these obstacles, the lesbian press has survived. Beginning
with Vice Versa in 1947, and continuing with Deneuve and other
publications in 1996, it continues to build community, to document
social struggle, and to give a voice to lesbians from coast to coast.

VICE VERSA

Two publications, Vice Versa and The Ladder, are called the ‘‘first’’
magazines for lesbians. Both were born during a 10-year period during
which lesbians had been given what literary critic Lillian Faderman
calls a ‘‘new outlaw status.’’10 Faderman writes in Surpassing the
Love of Men that love between women was considered a ‘‘disease’’
during the 1940s and 1950s and that the women ‘‘who were profess-
edly lesbian generally internalized those views’’: ‘‘This was reflected
in their own literature,’’ Faderman writes, ‘‘which was full of self-
doubts and self-loathing until the 1960s.’’11
Heterosexuality was so normative in the post-World War II world,
in fact, that a lesbian’s own positive experiences with another woman
could not displace her internalized cultural expectations. Even after
lesbians had managed businesses and supported the war effort, they
could hardly conceive of homes without men. In fact, because earning
a living was a logical priority for middle-class lesbians, any hint of
their being gay jeopardized their very livelihoods. In Spinisters and
Lesbians: Independent Womanhood in the United States, Trisha Frau-
zen writes:
Most of these women had only seen or heard of a future at home
with husband and children. Though they felt they wanted to be
independent, have adventures, and love women, neither their
home communities nor the larger culture provided words or posi-
tive images of women doing what they themselves wanted to
do.12
Given the prevailing cloud of cultural disapproval, the appearance
of Vice Versa is nothing short of miraculous. Certainly, its creator had
no intention of launching a controversial social movement. Instead,
234 LESBIAN STUDIES IN AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

she was lonely, and she hoped the publication would help her make
contact with other lesbians and prevent her having to rely on the bar
scene. (Lesbian bars in the 1940s and 1950s were often raided. Les-
bians were harassed and even raped by police, and those dressed in
men’s clothing were sometimes arrested.)
Vice Versa, typed and mimeographed by ‘‘Lisa Ben’’ (an anagram
of ‘‘lesbian’’), was printed monthly in Los Angeles from June 1947 to
February 1948. Neither Lisa Ben’s name nor address appeared in the
publication. According to Streitmatter, the title came from the fact that
homosexuality was considered a ‘‘vice’’ and from the fact that the
lesbian lifestyle was the opposite, or ‘‘versa,’’ of the established
norm.13
In her first issue, Lisa Ben explained the purpose behind her effort.
She wrote:
Have you ever stopped to enumerate the many different publica-
tions to be found on the average news stands? . . .
Yet, there is one kind of publication which would, I am sure,
have a great appeal to a definite group. Such a publication has
never appeared on the stands. News stands carrying the crudest
kind of magazines or pictorial pamphlets appealing to the vulgar
would find themselves severely censured were they to display
this other type of publication. Why? Because Society decreed it
thus.
Hence, the appearance of VICE VERSA, a magazine dedi-
cated, in all seriousness, to those of us who will never quite be
able to adapt ourselves to the iron-bound rules of Convention.14
The publication, which one editor called ‘‘a early clandestine ef-
fort,’’15 died after only nine issues when its editor, sole reporter, and
publisher was given a new job and had less time to work on the
newsletter. Also, as Streitmatter reveals, she had accomplished what
she had hoped: ‘‘I was discovering what the lesbian lifestyle was all
about, and I wanted to live it rather than write about it. So that was the
end of Vice Versa.’’16
As a gesture of commitment to Lisa Ben’s closeted community, Vice
Versa deserves its place as one of this country’s two early lesbian
publications. Editors of The Alyson Almanac: A Treasury of Informa-
tion for the Gay and Lesbian Community described Lisa Ben’s work
by saying: ‘‘She typed each issue manually, making as many carbons
 Jan Whitt 235

as possible, during her lunch break at RKO studios. Copies were then
circulated . . . Vice Versa was remarkably open for its time: The
subtitle read ‘America’s gayest magazine.’’’17
In an interview with writer Kate Brandt in Visibilities, Lisa Ben,
who lives in Burbank and still uses her pseudonym, said:
I had an awful lot of fun putting it together. I would use carbon
paper, because in those days we didn’t have such things as a
Xerox or even a ditto machine. And I would put in the original
and then seven copies, and that’s all the typewriter would take
legibly.
And I would type it out during working hours. I never had
enough work--I was a fast typist. And my boss would say, ‘‘Well,
I don’t care what you do if your work is done. But I don’t want
you to sit there and knit or read a magazine. I want you to look
busy.’’18
When she finished printing the first few copies, Lisa Ben gave them to
friends and asked them to pass the copies along: ‘‘I never sold it,’’ she
said. ‘‘I just gave it to my friends, because I felt that it was a labor
from the heart, and I shouldn’t get any money for it.’’19

THE LADDER

Lisa Ben’s ‘‘labor from the heart’’ preceded The Ladder, a longer-
lasting, more influential publication, by only a few years. Soon after
Vice Versa disappeared, the women of San Francisco’s Daughters of
Bilitis chapter20 created The Ladder, which was published continuous-
ly for 16 years. Founded in October 1955, the group produced its first
issue in October of 1956.
By this time, homosexuals had become what Faderman calls a
‘‘particular target of persecution.’’21 The focus in America during this
decade was on family values and loyalty to the status quo. Gays in the
government and the military were outed and labelled Communists, or
worse.
The leaders of Daughters of Bilitis, established as a social club,
were Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. They decided that--in addition to
providing a sense of community--their group also should dedicate
itself to changing public attitudes about lesbians. (Lyon served as the
236 LESBIAN STUDIES IN AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

first editor of The Ladder; in 1960, Martin was appointed co-editor by

the governing board of the Daughters of Bilitis.)
Given the hostile political climate, it was, perhaps, understandable
that in its early years, The Ladder was mailed in a plain envelope to
members of the Daughters of Bilitis. Well aware that they were treated
with suspicion and sometimes open scorn by society, the group
struggled desperately to encourage assimilation and to emphasize that
lesbians were normal, productive citizens.
In fact, one of the stated purposes of the Daughters of Bilitis (made
up predominantly of white, educated, middle-class women) was to
promote ‘‘the integration of the homosexual into society by . . . advo-
cating a mode of behaviour and dress acceptable to society.’’ This
integrationist statement appeared as part of four goals of the organiza-
tion in all early issues of The Ladder.
Little by little, the leaders of the organization began to recognize
that a lesbian’s acceptance by society often came at the expense of her
self-identity. As part of its activism, for example, the Daughters of
Bilitis picketed the State Department in 1965, calling for gay rights at the
Pentagon, White House, and other federal institutions. The group also
picketed the federal building in San Francisco on July 3, 1968, demand-
ing an end to governmental employment discrimination against gays and
lesbians. The events subsequently were covered in The Ladder.
However, The Ladder’s shift to a more militant position came too
late for many young lesbians, who were unconcerned about public
approval and determined to place blame where they believed it be-
longed: on a closed-minded society. Many of these women abandoned
the magazine. As Faderman explains, young lesbians ‘‘associated The
Ladder with the politics of adjustment.’’22 In her book, Odd Girls and
Twilight Lovers, Faderman writes:

There had been no existing groups that represented the ideals of

these young activist lesbians. Despite their relatively militant
rhetoric of the late 1960s, DOB and The Ladder could not recov-
er from their conservative image, and they were seen as too poky
for the new activists . . . The Ladder stopped publication in 1972,
not only because of internal difficulties but also because they had
failed to appeal to younger women, who were more interested in
the numerous militant gay and lesbian-feminist magazines that
were now available.23
 Jan Whitt 237

Faderman even cites one Ladder reader who in January 1988 called
the publication an ‘‘old conservative rag.’’24
Yet it is hard to discount the importance of The Ladder in the
history of lesbian publications. The October 1961 issue of The Ladder
celebrated the sixth anniversary of the organization that had begun in
1955 with eight women. By then, Daughters of Bilitis had chapters in
San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and New Jersey.
In 1963, the organization called for a change, saying The Ladder
should stop being merely a newsletter for members of the Daughters
of Bilitis. Barbara Gittings, who had founded the New York chapter of
the Daughters of Bilitis, became editor of The Ladder from 1963 to
1966.
Under Gittings the publication allied itself with more militant gay
civil rights groups and began to challenge prevalent views among
psychiatrists, ministers, and other professionals that homosexuality
was an illness or a sin that needed to be cured or eradicated. ‘‘We came
to the position that the ‘problem’ of homosexuality isn’t a problem at
all. The problem is society,’’25 Gittings said. Kristin Gay Esterberg
writes in The Journal of Sex Research:
The period 1956 to 1965 showed enormous changes in The Lad-
der and the women who wrote for it. From its earliest years,
when proclamations that lesbians were mentally ill or unnatural
went virtually unchallenged, The Ladder grew into a forum for
lesbians who wished to replace those conceptions with more
positive images. From its earliest years, The Ladder shows the
power of the psychiatric and medical professions to control the
terms of the debate around homosexuality and their ability to
cause enormous harm to many lesbian women.26
Early covers of The Ladder were line drawings with typed copy. As
a result of Gittings’ influence, however, the publication began to have
more representative covers, including a photo of two women holding
hands (October 1964). In addition, Gittings changed the name of the
publication to The Ladder: A Lesbian Review in 1964.
After disagreement over editorial emphasis and other issues, Phyllis
Lyon and Del Martin once again took the reins of The Ladder in
September 1966. Citing information from an interview with Gittings
on September 10, 1993, Streitmatter reveals that one of the reasons for
the shift in editorial leadership was that Gittings warred with the
238 LESBIAN STUDIES IN AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

leadership of Daughters of Bilitis about a disclaimer (‘‘for adults

only’’) that had always appeared on the cover of the magazine. She
removed the words without their consent. Streitmatter writes:

[The organization] chastised Gittings for making such a radical

change without their approval, and then hand stamped ‘‘for
adults only’’ on every copy before distributing them. After three-
and-a-half years of such disputes, the old guard removed Gittings
from the editor’s position in 1966 and reverted to a more con-
formist editorial philosophy.27

In the fall of 1968, Barbara Grier (‘‘Gene Damon’’) became editor

of the publication that now featured articles, short stories, reviews,
editorials, and columns. In 1970, she broke with Daughters of Bilitis,
seeking to create a more independent journal with activism at its
center. By 1971, topics included butch-femme issues, lesbian activists
in the women’s movement, Angela Davis, and ethnic issues. The
publication featured art by Georgia O’Keeffe and other well-known
artists, musicians, and writers.
Predictably, financial difficulty plagued the publication. In 1968,
Damon issued her first plea for financial and editorial support
(‘‘Bluntly, we must have money.’’).28 And in August/September 1969,
she wrote, ‘‘Don’t wait until there is no LADDER to help.’’29 The plea
continued in December/January 1970-71: ‘‘THE LADDER, though
written, edited, and circulated by volunteer labor cannot survive with-
out money . . . we need to keep alive the only real Lesbian magazine in
the world.’’30
And in April/May 1971, Damon requested editorial help and financial
support: ‘‘It’s true, WE CAN’T stop publishing in terms of need--but we
will have to if we run out of money. We are the only magazine in the
country that deals honestly with the needs of the Lesbian, and the only
women’s liberation publication that deals honestly with all women.’’31
Citing controversial content that made advertising difficult to solicit, Da-
mon adds: ‘‘We have no expense of any kind except the actual cost of the
printing and binding and mailing of the magazine. Everything else is a
labor or an expense given out of love . . . We are also at the point where
we can be forced to stop existing at all.’’32
As with numerous other lesbian publications, the war was to no
 Jan Whitt 239

avail. The final issue of The Ladder (August/September 1972) in-

cluded an angry message from Damon:

After 16 complete continuous years of publication, there are to be

no more issues . . . To those of you who have supported us . . . we
simply wish the best in the future. For those of you who have
casually read us through the years, indeed sometimes intending
to subscribe, but not ever quite getting around to it, we wish you
whatever you deserve and leave it to your own consciences to
decide just what that might be.33

The demise of The Ladder provides support for Streitmatter’s asser-

tion that marketing gay and lesbian publications was particularly chal-
lenging. Streitmatter writes:

Marketing the magazines was a problem as professional maga-

zine distributors refused to touch a gay publication . . . Despite
their daunting commitments of time and energy that totaled more
than forty hours a week, none of these journalists was paid.
Finances were a recurring problem. The publications depended
on the membership dues of their respective homosexual-rights
organizations for financial support, because heterosexual-owned
businesses refused to advertise in them.34

Daughters of Bilitis printed only 200 copies of the first issue of The
Ladder; the mailing list consisted of lesbians whom the members
knew personally. In spite of its inauspicious origin, The Ladder sur-
vived its early years and for a time became a unifying mouthpiece for
the fledgling lesbian community. Its success is traceable in large part
to the fact that its original editors, Lyon and Martin, were trained
journalists.35
The Ladder and its short-term predecessor, Vice Versa, inspired and
united a group of women who desperately needed a social and political
center. The Ladder and Vice Versa were important ‘‘first’’ lesbian
magazines for quite different reasons. Vice Versa was the signature of
one woman’s search for connection with others like her, while The
Ladder served as an information source for a growing lesbian audi-
ence. The Ladder was the mouthpiece not of one woman, but of a
group united by conviction and committed both to individual develop-
ment and to collective social change.
240 LESBIAN STUDIES IN AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

The Ladder did not set out to be a trailblazer as much as it did to be

a service publication for lesbians, but its contributions have caused
debate among media scholars. Some, such as critic Wayne Dynes,
believe that it was primarily concerned with the emotional health of
individual readers:

The pages of The Ladder reflected the priority that DOB attached
to personal problems of the individual lesbian, especially the one
living in isolation far from the subculture of the large cities. The
magazine reported political news, but was never meant to be a
political journal, and so the publishers shunned advocacy, devot-
ing space instead to poetry, fiction, history and biography.36

Others argue that articles in The Ladder dealt with controversial is-
sues--such as lesbian parents, lesbians in heterosexual marriages, and
lesbians dealing with job and salary concerns--and that these were
profoundly political issues. Claire Potter writes in the Lesbian Period-
icals Index: ‘‘Lesbian journals have always been political as well as
cultural acts. Their editors created community with every word put on
paper; each mailed edition was an attack on isolation and the social
judgement of deviancy.’’37
Although designed to serve the needs of various groups, the publi-
cations begun by the Daughters of Bilitis never lost sight of the indi-
vidual gay woman who struggled daily with institutionalized preju-
dice. One article in The Ladder by Doris Lyles, entitled ‘‘My Daughter
Is a Lesbian’’ (July 1958), symbolizes that goal. Proud of her daugh-
ter, whom she describes as intelligent, strong and determined, Lyles
writes, ‘‘There are no two more normal persons alive than my daugh-
ter and her charming associate.’’38
By the time The Ladder ceased publication in 1972, it had been
transformed from a chapter newsletter to a 45-page publication with a
national and international circulation of approximately 3,800. The
publication ran reviews, news, a calendar, short stories, and letters.
Since then, Grier and Donna J. McBride have produced The Index
to the Ladder, making the publication more accessible to scholars of
history, culture, literature, and gay-lesbian theory. The full set of The
Ladder was reissued with a complete index in 1975. In 1976, Grier
also published a volume entitled Lesbiana: Book Reviews from the
Ladder, 1966-1972. And with Lee Stuart, she produced the first edi-
 Jan Whitt 241

tion of The Lesbian in Literature: A Bibliography in 1967, a book

reprinted in 1981.
When The Ladder disappeared, Amazon Quarterly, founded in Oak-
land in 1972, stepped in to fill the void and asked all former Ladder
subscribers for help. By the time it, too, ceased publication in 1975,
numerous other lesbian publications had taken hold, including literary
journals such as Focus: A Journal for Lesbians.

FOCUS: A JOURNAL FOR GAY WOMEN

Originally subtitled A Journal for Gay Women, Focus: A Journal
for Lesbians actually was preceded by a monthly, eight-page newslet-
ter called Maiden Vogue. Appearing in 1969, the mimeographed
Maiden Vogue was distributed until February 1970. At that time, two
Boston Daughters of Bilitis members created Focus: A Journal for Gay
Women and began to do offset printing on their own press. By March,
Maiden Voyage had become Focus: A Journal for Gay Women.
Focus: A Journal for Lesbians was a pioneer publication in the
quest for gay and lesbian rights that occurred in the United States
during the 1960s and early 1970s. Following on the heels of more
established and more prestigious publications, such as The Ladder,
Focus: A Journal for Lesbians began as the mouthpiece for the Boston
chapter of Daughters of Bilitis but gained a reputation as an innovative
collection of poetry, short stories, and essays by and about lesbians.
In celebration of the first five years of Focus: A Journal for Gay
Women, the staff in December 1974 compiled a detailed history of the
Boston chapter of Daughters of Bilitis, and it was with great pride that
the editors and readers of Focus recognized their parent organization.
By noting the success of the group, members also were paying tribute
to their own courage in the face of public ridicule and hostility. While
pushing for social acceptance, lesbian readers had begun to unite and
to feel more confident about their own self-worth.
When the Massachusetts Daughters of Bilitis group was founded in
1969, there was no gay movement in the Boston area. To gain readers,
lesbian activists in the area mailed fliers to area subscribers of The
Ladder, the national Daughters of Bilitis magazine, and they also ran
an ad in a local underground paper, Boston After Dark, and advertised
on a talk show on what was then WMEX radio. During this time,
according to an issue of Focus, ‘‘virtually everyone involved in the
242 LESBIAN STUDIES IN AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

gay movement used pseudonyms,’’ and members were ‘‘afraid of

getting into trouble if they rented a post office box for the group.’’39
In December of 1973, subscribers could buy the magazine for $3.50
per year, or they could pay $4.50 to get the publication in a brown
wrapper. Most of the early covers featured innocuous line drawings. In
October of 1973, for example, the cover illustration alluded to the
popular ‘‘Peanuts’’ cartoon strip by Charles Schulz. It featured Lucy
and a friend saying, ‘‘Who needs Charlie Brown?’’ Other covers fea-
tured rather benign photos, such as the gay pride flag in July 1973.
Soon after, though, the activist focus of the literary journal became
hard to miss. Coverage of timely news and schedules of local gay
events was taken over by the Gay Community News in 1973, freeing
Focus: A Journal for Gay Women to devote itself to encouraging civil
rights for gays. In February of that year, the editors reproduced the
cover of the December/January 1969-70 issue of The Ladder in order
to stress the history and solidarity of the lesbian community. That
issue also included a quotation from Radclyffe Hall’s controversial
novel The Well of Loneliness, which attested to the growing numbers
of visible lesbians and a culture that ‘‘dare not disown’’40 them.
Gradually, editors and readers became vocal gay rights advocates.
One woman, quoted in the March 1971 issue of Focus: A Journal for
Gay Women, said, ‘‘We had gotten used to the smell of moth balls, the
darkness of that lonely closet somehow seemed more comfortable
than putting our jobs and families on the line.’’41 By the mid-1970s,
women were putting their jobs and families, as well as their reputa-
tions, firmly on the line.
Having celebrated their anniversary with a party on December 8,
1974, the editors began to create covers reflecting the group’s growing
pride and public visibility. In 1977, a line drawing of women kissing
appeared on the cover; by 1979, a nude woman was featured. With the
December 1977 issue, the name of the publication and its emphasis
changed. Focus: A Journal for Lesbians was born, and the magazine
became even more literary and certainly more political in emphasis.
In February 1980, Focus: A Journal for Lesbians and the Daughters
of Bilitis cut their financial ties, and editors devoted themselves to
particular controversial topics for each issue. (In March/April 1981,
for example, the publication featured a ‘‘Special Sexuality Issue.’’)
Finances remained a constant pressure, however, and in the Sep-
tember/October 1983 issue, editors wrote, ‘‘Focus, America’s oldest
 Jan Whitt 243

literary journal for lesbians--and, therefore, the world’s oldest literary

journal for lesbians--needs subscribers.’’ The ‘‘P.S.’’ read: ‘‘Monetary
donations in any amount are always appreciated, too.’’42
Certainly, this plea mirrors those in other centrally important les-
bian publications, such as The Ladder and Sinister Wisdom, where
requests for financial support from the editors were common. It is not
surprising that Focus: A Journal for Lesbians disappeared. It is far
more surprising--with its limited resources and the limited editorial
experience of its editors--that it persevered for more than a decade and
waged a successful war against rising publication prices, competition,
dropping circulation, and societal disdain.
However, the editors could not battle the one-two punch of drop-
ping circulation, unpredictable advertising revenue, and increasing
publication costs forever. In 1983, the message on the inside front
cover of Focus: A Journal for Lesbians read: ‘‘To Our Readers: Some-
what to our surprise, we have finally come to grips with our financial
situation and, perhaps even more important, with our own fatique
[sic]. After 12 years in continuous publication, FOCUS is ceasing with
this issue. Thank you AND GOOD-BYE.’’43
With that note ended one of the most supportive lesbian publica-
tions in the early gay rights movement. Although it remained a low-
gloss publication throughout its history, Focus: A Journal for Lesbians
had evolved into far more than an organizational newsletter. Focus
lasted 12 years, and its editors produced 112 issues from March 1971
to November/December 1983.
Like other gay magazines, Focus: A Journal for Lesbians weath-
ered identity crises, financial turmoil, and a changing cultural land-
scape during more than a decade of publication. As Potter writes in the
Lesbian Periodical Index, ‘‘While some themes remain constant, each
decade of Lesbian publications reflected the influences of a changing
time, a history of a people within a history of a country.’’44

SINISTER WISDOM
By the mid-1970s, Focus: A Journal for Lesbians and The Ladder
had made lesbian publications far more common. The lesbian commu-
nity had become more connected and more politically aware. What
would be the next challenge? What about a lesbian magazine de-
signed, written, and published in the Deep South? The possibility, as
244 LESBIAN STUDIES IN AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

one of the founding editors later said, was like ‘‘raising pineapples on
the North Pole.’’
Sinister Wisdom began in February 1976, when Harriet Desmoines
and Catherine Nicholson received a phone call inviting them to a
lesbian writer’s workshop in Knoxville, Tennessee. As Harriet wrote
in one issue of the publication, ‘‘Catherine and I brazenly announced
that we were starting a magazine. The women appeared to believe us,
and we taped ideas for the first issue.’’45
In addition to their concern that neither of them knew very much
about publishing, they also questioned the wisdom of starting a publi-
cation in Charlotte, North Carolina. In an editor’s note in 1977, Des-
moines writes:

Earlier this year it dawned on us that we were publishing a

journal of Lesbian writing in the hometown of the ‘‘Praise the
Lord’’ television network and that this was somewhat akin to
raising pineapples on the North Pole. Our solution? Move to
New York, move to Boston, move to L.A., move to San Francis-
co! Finally, we decided to just stay where we were. For one thing,
it freaks out people in the Bay area. For another, most Lesbians
live, love, work and politic outside the metropolitan centers.46

So, in July 1976, the editors decided on Sinister Wisdom as the title,
taking it from the publication The Female Man by Joanna Russ, and
the first lesbian publication in the land of magnolias and mint juleps
was born. Little did they know that by 1987, Sinister Wisdom would
call itself a ‘‘political journal for radical lesbian feminists.’’47
In Vol. 1, Issue 1, Desmoines and Nicholson wrote their ‘‘Notes for
a Magazine’’:

We’re lesbians living in the South. We’re white; sometimes un-

employed, sometimes working part-time. We’re a generation
apart . . . Sinister Wisdom is also our political action. We believe
that writing of a certain consciousness has greater impact when
it’s collected, when several voices give weight, harmony, and
countermelody to the individual message.48

Introducing the next issue, the editors dedicated the publication to

‘‘lesbians, who have been without faces, without voices, without a
validating herstory.’’49 The masthead promised essays, fiction, poetry,
 Jan Whitt 245

drama, reviews, and graphics and stated as its mission the develop-
ment of the lesbian imagination in politics and art.
Touting itself as Sinister Wisdom: A Journal of Words and Pictures
for the Lesbian Imagination in All Women, the publication began to
enlist artists and writers such as Audre Lorde, Rita Mae Brown, and
Adrienne Rich, with editing assistance provided by Mab Segrest. The
Fall 1976 issue was dedicated to Barbara Grier, who wrote 16 years
for The Ladder and was editor for four. (Grier later became the editor
of Naiad Press, the largest U.S. feminist-lesbian press.)
Sinister Wisdom survived its first year, and in the Spring 1977 issue,
Desmoines wrote that the publication had begun ‘‘at point zero: isola-
tion and ignorance. We decided to make a magazine because we
wanted more Lesbian writing, we wanted more friends, and we
wanted to express the power we felt building up inside ourselves, that
was both us and not-us. (We didn’t want much, just everything.)’’50
Defying lack of experience and geography, the group had not only
survived but prevailed.
By the summer of 1978, Sinister Wisdom was printing the work of
reputable writers such as Judy Grahn, Jane Rule, Carol Seajay, Andrea
Dworkin, and Gloria Anzaldua, but already there were warnings of its
financial plight. The editors included the following note along with the
plea for subscriptions: ‘‘Without [you], Sinister Wisdom dies of a
broken pocket book.’’51
In the Spring of 1980, Sinister Wisdom announced its new editors,
Michelle Cliff and well-known lesbian poet Adrienne Rich, and a new
place of publication, Amherst, Massachusetts. Cliff wrote the ‘‘Notes
for a Magazine’’ and promised a revolutionary commitment to social
revolution.52 Rich echoed her, saying, ‘‘In their first issue, in 1976,
Harriet and Catherine described the founding of Sinister Wisdom as a
political action. We reaffirm that purpose here.’’53
With this began the revolutionary contribution of Sinister Wisdom.
In a new emphasis on the disenfranchised within the lesbian commu-
nity itself, the editors began to focus on specific topics. For example, a
combined issue (22/23) entitled ‘‘A Gathering of Spirit’’ dealt with
Native Americans. Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz continued that tradition
through the 29/30 issues with the ‘‘Jewish Women’s Anthology,’’ a
336-page effort.
In the Fall of 1983, Cliff and Rich, who had devoted two years to
the publication, resigned. Rich said that having suffered for 33 years
246 LESBIAN STUDIES IN AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

with rheumatoid arthritis, she was in too much pain to continue her
editorial responsibilities: ‘‘I have been slowed down by physical pain
and its impact on the spirit.’’54 Kaye/Kantrowitz and Michaele Uccel-
la took over as editors of a publication that would ultimately boast a
circulation of 4,000.
New editors Kaye/Kantrowitz and Uccella wrote in the next issue,
‘‘We will try, during our time with Sinister Wisdom, to make her--like a
good dyke--both tough and sensitive.’’55 By 1985, Kaye/Kantrowitz
was the sole editor and publisher. When she left the publication in the
Winter of 1987, Kaye/Kantrowitz said she had tried to bring a ‘‘greater
emphasis on class issues and on the experience of working class
women.’’56
Sinister Wisdom then was to be headed by Elana Dykewomon, who
published in the 33rd issue what she called ‘‘Notes for a Magazine: A
Dyke Geography.’’ Taking over in the Fall of 1987, Dykewomon
writes, ‘‘Sinister Wisdom is a place. A country. To which lesbians add
their own villages, their own geography, issue by issue.’’57 Dykewo-
mon produced topical collections dealing with friendship, the dis-
abled, Italian-American women, class, lesbians of color, lesbian rela-
tionships, etc. Berkeley became the place of publication.
In the summer of 1991, issues 43-44 celebrated the history of the
publication from 1976 to 1991 with ‘‘The 15th Anniversary Retro-
spective.’’ Dykewomon writes, ‘‘This issue is a marker of our move-
ment: small and bright, bobbing in a difficult channel, sometimes
obscured by waves and weather, showing direction.’’58
By this time, the publication had been through seven editors, six
address changes, and what the editor called ‘‘all those Republican
years.’’59 Its 368-page issue was testimony to the survival of the
community it represented. In a letter for that issue, Harriet (Des-
moines) Ellenberger writes:

We began it in Charlotte, North Carolina (a more unlikely place

you could not pick) in utter (and I do mean utter) isolation . . . It
was an act of love . . . For me, Sinister Wisdom was never really
about lesbian community. It was never really about art or politics
either (since, for starters, the distinction between the two is not
clear to me). It was about transformation, nothing less. It was
about releasing the power of passionate love between women
through language and image, words and pictures, with the intent
 Jan Whitt 247

of saving the earth and her creatures, including ourselves, from

destruction.60
With Issue 46 (Spring 1992), Sinister Wisdom became a tax-exempt
corporation and seemed financially solvent. By 1993-94, however, the
warnings began again: ‘‘This place, Sinister Wisdom, is in danger of
closing down.’’61 Like Focus: A Journal for Lesbians and The Ladder,
Sinister Wisdom could not withstand falling subscription rates and
rising publication costs, and it, too, disappeared, but not without hav-
ing made a substantial contribution to the history of gay publications
in America.

CONCLUSIONS

Some lesbian publications--such as Lesbian Tide and The Furies--

were often more incendiary than Sinister Wisdom (certainly more
controversial than Vice Versa, The Ladder, and Focus. Others, such as
Gay Community News with its 60,000 subscribers, were more well-
known. And some lesbian literary magazines, such as Conditions,
were as influential as Focus. Certainly, numerous lesbian publications
had short lifespans, including The Furies, Amazon Quarterly, Laven-
der Woman, and Lesbian Tide.
However, the significance of Vice Versa, The Ladder, Focus, and
Sinister Wisdom cannot be overstated. They represent four genres--a
mimeographed newsletter, a news and issues magazine, a literary jour-
nal, and an activist publication, respectively. They also represent les-
bian communities on the West Coast, in the East, and in the Deep
South (with publication bases scattered throughout the nation).
Most importantly, however, they document the lesbian press as
something that began primarily to connect isolated, closeted women to
one another and to give them a voice. Few editors ever dreamed that
their efforts would encourage participation in what would become a
potent social movement. Certainly, Lisa Ben, the woman Streitmatter
calls ‘‘mother of the lesbian press,’’ never expected that Vice Versa, a
‘‘tiny magazine she created to combat her own loneliness, would play
a singular role in a social movement that would help define the second
half of the twentieth century.’’62
Lesbian publications never made money. They never rivaled main-
stream publications, nor did they even compete with the more success-
248 LESBIAN STUDIES IN AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

ful, glossy gay male periodicals. However, as Phyllis Lyon said of The
Ladder, ‘‘[It] broke the silence. Finally. Before it came along, there
was absolutely nothing about lesbians in the major press.’’63
Vice Versa, The Ladder, Focus, and Sinister Wisdom helped lesbians
to build communities, and they gave their readers ways to combat
feelings of marginalization. (The Ladder even inspired what lesbians
called ‘‘Ladder parties,’’ gatherings where women read and reacted
and felt accepted.) They gave voice to a nearly silent minority, and
they disseminated news about events that spawned profound social
change.
For these and other reasons, it is impossible to gauge the importance
of lesbian newsletters, magazines, journals, and newspapers in terms
of circulation figures, income, or even the longevity of each publica-
tion. Instead, it is the five decades of the lesbian press and its impact
on its readers that most accurately measures its worth.

NOTES
1. In his article ‘‘Creating a Venue for the ‘Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name’:
Origins of the Gay and Lesbian Press,’’ Journalism and Mass Communication Quar-
terly, Vol. 72, No. 2 (Summer 1995), pp. 436-447, Rodger Streitmatter lists ‘‘standard
histories’’ of the American media that omit reference to the gay and lesbian press
(p. 444). They include Michael Emery and Edwin Emery, The Press and America: An
Interpretive History of the Mass Media, 7th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
1992) and Jean Folkerts and Dwight L. Teeter Jr., Voices of a Nation: A History of the
Media in the United States, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: MacMillan, 1994). He also lists
several histories of alternative journalism, including Robert J. Glessing, The Under-
ground Press in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970); Lauren
Kessler, The Dissident Press: Alternative Journalism in American History (Beverly
Hills, CA: Sage, 1984); and Laurence Leamer, The Paper Revolutionaries: The Rise
of the Underground Press (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1972).
The gay-lesbian press also is omitted from William David Sloan, James G.
Stovall, and James D. Startt, eds., Media in America: A History, 2nd ed. (Scottsdale,
AZ: Publishing Horizons, Inc.), 1993.
However, the eighth edition of The Press and America now has two references
to the gay-lesbian press. The importance of Streitmatter’s recent book, Unspeakable:
The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1995),
cannot be overstated, and such a study is certainly overdue.
2. Cited by Rodger Streitmatter in Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Les-
bian Press in America (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1995), pp. 279, 339.
3. Cited in Unspeakable, p. 158.
4. Unspeakable, p. 185.
5. Quoted in Unspeakable, p. 185.
 Jan Whitt 249

6. Mattachine Society, the first gay organization established in 1950 in Los An-
geles, took its name from ‘‘matachin’’ or ‘‘matachine,’’ meaning ‘‘to mask oneself.’’
ONE, Inc., established in Los Angeles in 1952, sought to unify the national gay com-
munity. In January 1955, the San Francisco chapter of the Mattachine Society began
a journal, Mattachine Review. It lasted until 1966. ONE, Inc. published ONE Maga-
zine, considered by many the first successful gay magazine in America. ONE Maga-
zine debuted in 1953 and achieved a circulation of 5,000 before it ceased regular pub-
lication in 1968. ONE Institute Quarterly of Homophile Studies replaced it, although
that quarterly ceased publication in 1973.
7. Unspeakable, pp. 112-14.
8. Maurine H. Beasley and Sheila J. Gibbons, Taking Their Place: A Documen-
tary History of Women and Journalism (Washington, DC: The American University
Press, 1993), p. 7.
9. Taking Their Place, p. 23.
10. Lillian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men (New York: Quality Paperback
Book Club, 1994), p. 20.
11. Surpassing, p. 20.
12. Trisha Franzen, Spinisters and Lesbians: Independent Womanhood in the
United States (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1996), p. 104.
13. Rodger Streitmatter, ‘‘Vice Versa: America’s First Lesbian Magazine,’’ paper
presented at the Association for Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication,
Aug. 9, 1995, p. 5.
14. Lisa Ben, ‘‘In Explanation,’’ Vice Versa, June 1947, p. l.
15. Wayne R. Dynes, Encyclopaedia in Homosexuality (New York: Garland Pub-
lishing, 1990), p. 1034.
16. Streitmatter, ‘‘Vice Versa.’’ p. 8.
17. Alyson Publications, The Alyson Almanac: A Treasury of Information for the
Gay and Lesbian Community (Boston: Alyson Publications, Inc.), 1990, p. 21.
18. Quoted by Kate Brandt, ‘‘Lisa Ben: A Lesbian Pioneer,’’ Visibilities (January/
February 1990), p. 8.
19. Quoted by Brandt, ‘‘Lisa Ben,’’ p. 9.
20. The Daughters of Bilitis took their name from ‘‘Bilitis,’’ the Hellenic form of
‘‘Ba’alat,’’ the female counterpart of Baal in Semitic mythology, and from Pierre
Louys’ Les Chansons de Bilitis (1894). After Louys’ death, Les Chansons de Bilitis
inedites and Las Chansons secretes de Bilitis appeared in 1929 and 1931, respective-
ly. Unlike the first novel, the others contained explicit lesbian eroticism. The heroine
of the novels lived in Mytilene on the island of Lesbos and wrote elegies to her be-
loved Mnasidika, having learned to write poetry at the feet of Sappho. The national
Daughters of Bilitis organization began as a reaction to a growing, organized cry for
gay civil rights in the 1950s. Its related organizations for gay men included the Mat-
tachine Society and ONE, Inc.
Daughters of Bilitis, the Mattachine Society, ONE, Inc., and other groups, such
as the Homophile Action League, used their publications to encourage membership,
to debate issues, and to announce both demonstrations and social events. The three
organizations worked together to fight discrimination and to end the stereotypes of
gays and lesbians.
250 LESBIAN STUDIES IN AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

21. Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in
Twentieth-Century America (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1991),
p. 140.
22. Surpassing, p. 380.
23. Odd Girls, p. 197.
24. Surpassing, p. 384.
25. Quoted in Unspeakable, p. 51.
26. Kristin Gay Esterberg, ‘‘From Illness to Action: Conceptions of Homosexual-
ity in The Ladder, 1956-1965,’’ The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Febru-
ary 1990), p. 78.
27. Rodger Streitmatter, ‘‘Lesbian and Gay Press: Raising a Militant Voice in the
1960s,’’ American Journalism Vol. 12, No. 2 (Spring 1995), p. 158.
28. The Ladder, Vol. 13, Nos. 1-2 (October/November 1968), p. 33.
29. The Ladder, Vol. 13, Nos. 11-12 (August/September 1969), inside back cover.
30. The Ladder, Vol. 15, Nos. 3-4 (December/January 1970-71), inside front cover.
31. The Ladder, Vol. 15, Nos. 7-8 (April/May 1971), p. 4.
32. The Ladder, Vol. 15, Nos. 7-8 (April/May 1971), p. 4.
33. The Ladder, Vol. 16, Nos. 11-12 (August/September 1972), pp. 3
34. Streitmatter, ‘‘Lesbian and Gay Press,’’ p. 144.
35. Having earned a journalism degree from the University of California at Berke-
ley in 1946 and having worked for the Chico (Calif.) Enterprise, Lyon served as the
first editor. In 1960, Martin was appointed editor by the governing board of the
Daughters of Bilitis. Martin had studied journalism at San Francisco State College
and had been a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.
36. Dynes, Encyclopedia, p. 137.
37. Clare Potter, The Lesbian Periodicals Index (Tallahassee, FL: Naiad Press,
1986), p. vi.
38. Doris Lyles, ‘‘My Daughter Is a Lesbian,’’ The Ladder, Vol. 2, No. 10 (July
1958), p. 4.
39. Focus, December 1974, p. 2.
40. Focus, February 1973, cover. The full quotation is:

We are
coming
And our name
is legion
You dare not
disown us.

41. Focus, March 1971, p. 10.

42. Focus, September/October 1983, p. 6.
43. Focus, December 1983, inside front cover.
44. Potter, The Lesbian Periodical Index, p. vi.
45. Sinister Wisdom, Spring 1977, p. 99.
46. Sinister Wisdom, Spring 1977, p. 100.
47. Alyson Publications, The Alyson Almanac, p. 241.
48. Sinister Wisdom, July 1976, pp. 3-4.
 Jan Whitt 251

49. Sinister Wisdom, July 1976, p. 72.

50. Sinister Wisdom, Spring 1977, p. 99.
51. Sinister Wisdom, Summer 1978, p. 2.
52. Sinister Wisdom, 17 (1981), pp. 2-4.
53. Sinister Wisdom, 17 (1981), p. 4.
54. Sinister Wisdom, 24 (1983), p. 3.
55. Sinister Wisdom, 25 (Winter 1984), p. 3.
56. Sinister Wisdom, 31 (Winter 1987), p. 3.
57. Sinister Wisdom, 33 (Fall 1987), p. 3.
58. Sinister Wisdom, 43-44 (Summer 1991), p. 5.
59. Sinister Wisdom, 43-44 (Summer 1991), p. 8.
60. Sinister Wisdom, 43-44 (Summer 1991). pp. 8-9.
61. Sinister Wisdom, 51 (Winter 1993-94), p. 5.
62. Unspeakable, p. 13, 16.
63. Unspeakable, p. 39.