Barbara Love and Sidney Abbott - nonfiction - 1971 - p. 59, 79

Co-authored by lesbian activists and partners Barbara Love and Sidney Abbott, this text is among the first nonfiction texts to treat lesbianism in a positive and non-diagnostic manner, as well as discussing intersections between lesbianism and feminism and the place of lesbians within the women’s movement.

Sidney Abbott was a member of Lavender Menace, a group that worked to ensure the inclusion of lesbians within the feminist movement; its name refers to a phrase mainstream feminist leader Betty Friedan used to describe the threat she believed lesbians posed to women’s progress. Barbara Love worked as part of the National Organization of Women (NOW) to organize demonstrations, marches, and public campaigns. Love was also a member of the group whose 1973 presentation to the American Psychiatric Association (APA) persuaded the latter to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

Key elements: activism, feminism, homosexuality, lesbian