Papers by Lauren Gutterman
The Oral History Review
Abstract This article draws on oral history interviews with twenty-six lesbian and bisexual women... more Abstract This article draws on oral history interviews with twenty-six lesbian and bisexual women who came out within the context of heterosexual marriages between the 1970s and the early 2000s. Despite the extent to which the LGBTQ community emphasizes narratives of progress and triumph, feelings of shame, guilt, regret, and ambivalence figured significantly in these women's life stories, particularly with regard to their experiences of coming out. This article thus considers how oral history can provide queer narrators with an opportunity to share negative feelings that often remain unspoken within mainstream LGBTQ culture and politics.
Journal of the History of Sexuality, 2018
Radical History Review
This article traces the founding of Senior Action in a Gay Environment (SAGE), the nation’s oldes... more This article traces the founding of Senior Action in a Gay Environment (SAGE), the nation’s oldest and largest social service organization for LGBT elders. Drawing on archival documentation as well as interviews with SAGE founders and early members, the article shows how SAGE was born of two largely disconnected social transformations: the gay and lesbian movement and the national expansion of services and programs for the elderly that was enabled by the Older Americans Act of 1965. SAGE’s institutionalization and its relationship with the state allowed it to grow in an increasingly conservative political context while ensuring that the organization would not take a broadly intersectional approach to the challenges gay and lesbian elders faced. Despite its political limitations, however, SAGE provided a setting in which some white gay and lesbian elders began to see themselves as agents of social change.
Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies
Journal of the History of Sexuality, 2018
Journal of Social History, 2012
Using interviews, diaries, memoirs, and letters to the Daughters of Bilitis and/or its long time ... more Using interviews, diaries, memoirs, and letters to the Daughters of Bilitis and/or its long time leaders Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, this article examines the lives of more than 160 wives who expressed lesbian desires from the 1950s through the 1970s. Scholars have typically understood such wives as being trapped within marriage in the postwar era, before breaking free and building new lesbian lives in the midst of the women's and gay liberation movements. While I do not overturn this narrative entirely, I demonstrate the remarkable extent to which wives were able to create space for lesbian desires within their homes and marriages throughout this time period. Confined to their local communities by the responsibilities of childcare and housework, and ambivalent about publicly claiming a lesbian or bisexual identity, most wives had limited access to "out" lesbian worlds. Instead, they transformed the nuclear family household into a lesbian space. They contacted lesbian communities remotely, found lovers among female friends within the context of their "straight" lives, and engaged in affairs within their own homes. Initially, such wives carried on affairs without their husbands' knowledge, but by the 1970s they chose with greater frequency to tell their husbands directly about their lesbian relationships and to openly balance marriage and affairs. The women's experiences described here compel us to reconsider how marriage and the household have functioned, as well as what constitutes lesbian space.
Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy, 2011
For years a collection of hundreds of colorful and outrageous political buttons lay in the Lesbia... more For years a collection of hundreds of colorful and outrageous political buttons lay in the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, accessible only to the Archives' visitors. That changed in when a determined library science student, Teresa Lee, digitized a selection of those buttons and uploaded them onto OutHistory.org, the website on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) US history. Today, anyone with Internet access can view the buttons for themselves and in doing so, gain valuable insight into the history of lesbian politics and culture. Teresa Lee is far from being the only student to take advantage of OutHistory.org in recent years. Since the site's launch in , students have been using OutHistory.org to access primary materials, to publish their own research and writing, and to read the work of leading scholars in the field of sexuality history. Indeed, OutHistory.org has grown to include a wealth of documents, photographs, and oral history interviews, making it a valuable resource for teachers of gender and sexuality. As OutHistory.org's Project Coordinator, I will provide examples of how instructors can use, or are already using, OutHistory.org to enrich their curricula and strengthen students' understanding of the LGBTQ past.
The Public Historian, 2010
Sexing History podcast by Lauren Gutterman
In the 1980s and 1990s, the San Francisco Metropolitan Community Church wrestled with profound qu... more In the 1980s and 1990s, the San Francisco Metropolitan Community Church wrestled with profound questions: What does it mean to minister a gay church when so many in the congregation are dying from AIDS-related complications and grieving the recently dead? How do you have faith during an epidemic? And what does it mean to participate in communion in a community ravaged by a plague?
In the 1970s, Evangelical women published bestselling marriage manuals. These books encouraged mi... more In the 1970s, Evangelical women published bestselling marriage manuals. These books encouraged millions of American women to have active and exciting sex lives. They also insisted that in order to find happiness, a woman must submit to her husband's divinely ordained authority.
In 1973, CBS cancelled the top-rated sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie after Jewish religious leaders o... more In 1973, CBS cancelled the top-rated sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie after Jewish religious leaders objected to its positive portrayal of an interfaith marriage. This episode explores the sexual and religious politics of Jewish-Christian interfaith marriage since WWII.
In 1975, two years after Roe v Wade, an all white and mostly Catholic jury convicted Dr. Kenneth ... more In 1975, two years after Roe v Wade, an all white and mostly Catholic jury convicted Dr. Kenneth Edelin, an African American physician, of manslaughter for performing a legal second trimester abortion. His trial transformed the anti-abortion movement.
https://soundcloud.com/user-197021129/episode-2-abortion-on-trial
In 1980, gays and lesbians in the U.S. had no legal right to attend high school prom with a same-... more In 1980, gays and lesbians in the U.S. had no legal right to attend high school prom with a same-sex date. Then Aaron Fricke sued his high school and everything changed.
https://soundcloud.com/user-197021129/episode-1-prom-night
Public Writing by Lauren Gutterman
Reviews by Lauren Gutterman
Committee on LGBT History Newsletter, 2011
Uploads
Papers by Lauren Gutterman
Sexing History podcast by Lauren Gutterman
https://soundcloud.com/user-197021129/episode-2-abortion-on-trial
https://soundcloud.com/user-197021129/episode-1-prom-night
Public Writing by Lauren Gutterman
Reviews by Lauren Gutterman
https://soundcloud.com/user-197021129/episode-2-abortion-on-trial
https://soundcloud.com/user-197021129/episode-1-prom-night