2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

Attending to lesbian activist cultures, this panel seeks to address how in the words of feminist Audre Lorde “. . .sexuality is so energizing.” Using their sexuality as empowering tools, lesbian activists carved out spaces for themselves, enabling them to refashion their identities, create connections, and seek recognition that privileged their lived experiences. Underscoring the diversity of LGBT socio-political practices, the papers argue that lesbians negotiated social conflicts, agitated for change, and re-imagined their communities by exploring the intersecting issues of race, class, gender, health, and citizenship.

With documents collected in archives in the United States, Germany, and Brazil, each panelist illuminates lesbians’ sexual politics in new contexts. Tiffany N. Florvil examines how Afro-German lesbian activists, influenced by Audre Lorde, forged ties to others in and beyond Germany through their feminist organization ADEFRA and their 1990 international conference. Jordan Biro Walters demonstrates how the University of New Mexico’s Women’s Studies Program served as a lesbian haven and also forced white lesbians to question their narrow understandings of women as a category. As a result, they cultivated solidarity networks with lesbians of color and broaden the scope of sexual identity and activism. Nessette Falu’s analysis of black lesbian activism in the wake of recent Brazilian healthcare legislation shows how they politically mobilized to demand access to healthcare and visibility as marginalized citizens.  Taken together these papers reveal the complexity of notions of belonging, lesbian and feminist activism, as well as the interplay of the local, the national, and the global.