“Dykes First”

Abstract

This chapter explores the alternative, boundary-dwelling communities built by lesbian separatists in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. We examine their acidic criticisms of mixed-sex societies, their hope for multiple yet homogeneous communities of lesbians, and the strategies they used to recruit, build, and sustain collectives beyond the patriarchal United States. Like other separatists, they framed categories of identity—sex and sexuality in their case—as reasons to separate. Unlike other separatist movements, they did not seek to build a new nation. Other separatists wanted to leave their American prison and retreat into a national fortress; lesbian separatists envisioned a far more formless, scattered alternative. Other separatist discourses were stocked with singular ideals of a national homeland. Lesbian separatist discourse was, on the whole, nearly totally devoid of positive references to nations, nationality, or nationalism generally.