MISSION

Wanderground Lesbian Archive/Library collects and provides access to a broad selection of New England-based publications, artifacts, and personal memorabilia from the period 1950-2000. We offer community gathering spaces in order to preserve the vibrant past of local Lesbians, encourage present-day learning and discovery, and cultivate a future of thriving Lesbian communities.

VISION

Built upon the energies and pride of Lesbians, Wanderground Lesbian Archive/Library reclaims Lesbian visibility, lifts our voices, honors lived experiences, and celebrates the creativities of Lesbians. Committed to the belief that the personal is political, we gather the stories of New England Lesbians and protect legacies which might otherwise be forgotten. Grounded in the knowledge of our past, we work to integrate the present, and to build a transformational and equitable future.

VALUES

  • Lesbian Visibility: We hold, protect, respect, and share the power and integrity of Lesbians, our herstories, and lived experiences. We honor the fullness of what it means to be Lesbian.
  • Integrity / Respect: Guided by radical Lesbian-feminist principles, we acknowledge the broad array of diverse and intergenerational Lesbians’ communities and interests, both social and political.
  • Learn-Together*: Through the collection, stewardship, and sharing of Lesbians’ personal artifacts, we pursue opportunities to come to deeper understanding of and appreciation for the varieties of Lesbian communities, personal relationships, social activities, and justice activisms.  In this way, we create new meaning-making.*
  • Grace-making* / Accessibility: In the spirit-gift of love and strength for all Lesbians, we strive to provide accessibility in its many forms.
  • Nurturing: We seek to offer Lesbian-centered space(s) that sustain our sense of well-being and connections to each other as we navigate through our daily lives.
  • Memory/Discovery: We recognize the need for “deep recall”* – the (re)discovery of details, stories, perspectives, and activisms embedded in our memoirs, herstories, and creative expressions. Wanderground offers space to wander, browse, explore, and reflect.
  • Collective Activism/Effort: Wanderground depends on our Groundkeepers (volunteers) who organize and maintain the Wanderground space and collections. Through service and collaboration, we seek to connect individuals in collective engagement, build our sustainability, and create opportunities for vibrant sisterhood.

*Words italicized with * indicate language borrowed from The Wanderground novel by Sally Miller Gearhart (1978, Persephone Press).

BACKSTORY

A Backstory – Evolutions of Lesbian Language and Identity

Wanderground preserves Lesbian life and legacies within the New England region from the time period 1950 to 2000. We collect and maintain personal archives, organizational archives, letters, diaries, periodicals, books, music, and memorabilia; we work to describe and provide an understanding of the social and political context of those years, the struggles and oppressions Lesbians faced and against which they actively rebelled.

Evolving Lesbian language during the period 1950-2000 was both a cultural and political phenomenon. For those who came of age in later time periods, a cultural frame of reference is necessary to understanding.  Words have meaning, but meaning is not immutable. Language evolves and changes over time. Terminology that arose in the context of the women’s and Lesbian rights movements, the activist era to which the Wanderground collection is devoted, can only be fully understood within the social, political, and cultural rebellions underway at that time. Words and phrases that were empowering to Lesbians, indeed that were essential to their identification as Lesbians in that era, may be misunderstood today if read out of their original context and viewed only from the lens of the 21st century.  To honor and preserve Lesbian heritage, the following brief review provides some guideposts.

Lesbian Unity & Pride!
Drawing from cover of Lesbian Outlook, Summer 1993
Published by Lesbians for Lesbians in Greenfield, MA
Issues dated from 1991-1994
Artist: unknown

The words Lesbians created, adapted, and used to describe themselves and their place in the world, were fighting words—fighting back against the systemic oppression of women.  In that era, for example, the words “woman” and “women” were often given alternate spellings by Lesbians and the Lesbian press movement, such as “womon,” “wimmin,” and “womyn.”  The respellings removed “man” and “men”—a bold declaration. When Lesbians and radical feminists talked or wrote about their activist predecessors or of the lives of women who came before, they used the term “herstory,” calling out the extreme bias of the one-sided scholarship called, accurately, “history” or “his-story.” 

Among many Lesbians and feminists, the phrase “woman-identified-woman” or “womon-identified-womon” captured the radical, “consciousness-raised1  perspective that society and its institutions, laws, and language were inherently male-identified, and that resistance to those male-identified norms was essential. Full resistance required a rejection of male-identified structures and mores and a turn to woman-identified thinking. In that era, a “womon-identified-womon” was a woman whose self-definition was in no way centered on the symbolic, all-dominant male. As articulated by RadicalLesbians in 1970, “(i)t is the primacy of women relating to women, of women creating a new consciousness of and with each other, which is at the heart of women’s liberation, and the basis for the cultural revolution.”2 In the latter half of the 20th century, the work of activist Lesbians and feminists was to stand in bold defiance of male domination. Thus, stating that one was a “woman-identified-woman” was a radical defiance of patriarchy, misogyny, and oppression, not a definition of biological sex. In like manner, for many women activists in the mid- to late- 20th century, references to “sisterhood” had nothing to do with establishing biologic definitions or boundaries and everything to do with removing the patriarchy from the center, removing “man” from the definition and identity of womon, reclaiming and celebrating the value of a community of women relating to each other, for each other.

During this period, even the words for women who loved or found companionship with other women (sexually) also shifted as some found the word “Lesbian” perhaps too political.  Some may have preferred “gay woman.” Others might have lived relationship as butch/femme. Some embraced the formerly pejorative word “dyke.” Many refused the terms “queer” or “homosexual” as being male-identified. Our conversations encompassed fiery exchanges as our behaviors, language, attitudes, and thinking grew and/or transformed. There is and was no one monolithic Lesbian community – but rather a broad array of Lesbian communities and interests with one common denominator – our love and care for other Lesbians.

Each new generation will create its own revolutions, and will need its own vocabulary to spread its messages of change and progress, its “hell-no” to the status quo. By taking the time to understand the context of the revolutionary activism that came before us, of the times, the struggles and the vision that defined language and the triumphs of prior generations, we honor the work of our foremothers and their contributions to the activism of today. As an archive, we honor the past by holding and preserving the materials, providing clues to social and political context, and guiding viewers towards various sources of information for their own exploration.

1  “Consciousness Raising” was the foundation of the modern feminist movement.  Spreading quickly across the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, small groups of women would gather to share personal stories, which quickly revealed shared oppressions and led many of the groups to form activist and service organizations, and/or to adopt and implement activist agendas.

2   “Woman-Identified Woman.” Radicalesbians, 1970.  Source collection: Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance (ALFA) Archives; Digital collection: Women’s Liberation Movement Print Culture, Duke University Libraries: Repository Collections and Archives. https://repository.duke.edu/dc/wlmpc/wlmms01011

Scroll to Top