The Furies, they called it, after the three Greek Goddesses with blood-red eyes and snakes for hair, who took vengeance on Orestes for having killed his mother by driving him crazy.
But that movement they were building must be lesbian, the Furies announces. What they meant by lesbian was not just a bedroom act but a conscious “political choice”. Lesbianism meant escape from male domination; lesbianism undermined the power men exercised over women. “Lesbians are not born”, the Furies said: Lesbians are women who have chosen o refuse to put themselves at the service of men. Women’s liberation by itself can’t fight supremacy, the Furies warned in the articles they wrote for their paper: That’s because women’s liberation alone doesn’t grapple with the main problem — which is that heterosexuality feeds male power, which makes patriarchy possible.
Lesbianism is where Feminism goes if it stays on track
- The Gay Revolution by Lillian Faderman