Authentic women, menacing authorities: the rhetoric of lesbian politics of feminism's second wave, 1966-1975

Growing from an interest in the various conflicts centered on the relationship between lesbian and second wave feminist politics, I explore the ways that rhetorical processes of authority and authenticity functioned in discourse from and about the womens movement from 1966 to 1975. Identified as menaces by liberal feminists and truly liberated women by radical feminists, lesbians occupied a unique rhetorical place in feminisms second wave. The dialectical tensions between being at once feminisms nightmare and movement womens fantasy exacerbated considerable conflicts within the movement, and such conflicts are emblematic of the second waves broader concerns over identityboth public and personal. In this project, I argue, what was at stake for both liberal and radical feminists was a political identification of woman that would remain consistent with the movements commitments. As radical feminism theorized the liberated woman and liberal feminism strategized a credible woman, lesbian sexuality threatened and promised the sustainability of feminisms identity commitment. Although the political nature or woman was questioned, the ontological was not. As such, this project seeks to historicize a poststructural critique of the subject through three analyses, which point to humanisms constraining and dangerous influence on feminisms sexual politics.