An exploration of the worldwide Women’s Movement as traced through daring and passionate lesbian love letters: The reflection of lesbian sexuality as part of the engine driving towards women’s equality.

Marie Davis

Independent Author/Cartoonist

Lousville. Kentucky 

Lesbian Love Letters – an act of private activism Forced to conceal themselves in society, lesbians throughout history have professed their love in coded letters. These letters, confessing love and desire, were an advance of private activism. In this session, we will explore letters written by famous and not as well known women from the classical era to current times. How have these letters evolved as the role of women has changed? Historically, lesbians have expressed radical ideas of women’s equality and they have comprised a large portion of the primary players in the Women’s Movement worldwide. Although few lesbians have been hunted down and prosecuted in legal courts for their sexual preference, those facing persecution were more often punished for veering from what was considered a woman’s proper place in gender behavior. So, it is impossible to separate the evolution of the Women’s Movement for equality and the advancements made by lesbians to confess their loves and come out of the closet. Source material will include for this session such noted works as Between Us by Kay Turner, Hidden from History, reclaiming the gay and lesbian past by Martha Vicinus, and The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse by Stephen Cote. A complete bibliography of all source materials will be made available to all participants during the session.

About Marie Davies

Marie Davis has been working as a freelance journalist, writer, and cartoonist for sixteen years. Her work has appeared in numerous periodicals including Louisville Homes and Gardens, Today’s Woman, and LEO. Twenty-one newspapers have carried her syndicated comic strip titled Kentucky Tales. She has had two traveling exhibitions Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Patriots and Ten Great State Women. Like those exhibits, the major focus of her work has been to tell women’s stories lost to history. An able researcher Ms. Davis has scoured old newspapers, books, and periodicals to find her fascinating stories. She has also interviewed numerous intriguing women and collected their oral “herstories.” Among those stories include the hidden romances of lesbians prominent in the Women’s Movement.

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