Male Subjectivity at the Margins

Abstract

each piece. Chapters are entitled 'Beginnings', 'Kin', 'Becoming', 'Uniforms', 'Out', 'Mind and body', 'Together', 'Power and community', and there is minimal editorial text between each extract. Reading What a Lesbian Looks Like emphasizes the authenticity and diversity of lesbian voices in Britain. The lack of any editorial comment or context to the extracts has particular effects. The extracts were presumably selected and organized into chapters by the NLGS team, but very little information is available on how this process occurred. Was it simply on the basis of the most common themes in the Survey submissions, or were particular themes given special priority, and if so, why? Presenting the extracts in this way means the lack of any historical or political context outside of the extracts themselves, which can produce a sense of listening to a set of dislocated voices. So what do these books tell us about lesbians' lives in Britain and the USA? They present an enormous diversity of stories and experiences in a readable and detailed form. They also imply that as Lillian Faderman argues: 'The criterion for identifying oneself as a lesbian has come to resemble the liberal criterion for identifying oneself as a Jew: you are one only if you consider yourself one' (5). The political implications of this definition of (post1920s) lesbianism and of the diversity of lesbians' lives are complex and the focus for continuing debate in lesbian-feminist groups in Britain, the USA and around the world.