Daughters of Bilitis
Encyclopedia
The Daughters of Bilitis (bɪˈliːtɨs; DOB or, the Daughters), was the first lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...

 rights organization in the United States. It was formed in San Francisco in 1955, conceived as a social alternative to lesbian bars, which were considered illegal and thus subject to raids and police harassment. It lasted for fourteen years and became a tool of education for lesbians, gay men, researchers, and mental health professionals.

As the DOB gained members, their focus shifted to providing support to women who were afraid to come out
Come Out
Come Out may refer to:*Come Out , a music piece by Steve Reich*Coming out, disclosing one's homosexuality or bisexuality.*"Come Out", a song by Camper van Beethoven from New Roman Times...

, by educating them about their rights and gay history. Historian Lillian Faderman
Lillian Faderman
Lillian Faderman is a scholar whose books on lesbian relationships and romantic friendship in history have earned critical praise and awards. Faderman is a professor of English at California State University in Fresno, California.-Early life:...

 declared, "Its very establishment in the midst of witch-hunt
Witch-hunt
A witch-hunt is a search for witches or evidence of witchcraft, often involving moral panic, mass hysteria and lynching, but in historical instances also legally sanctioned and involving official witchcraft trials...

s and police harassment was an act of courage, since members always had to fear that they were under attack, not because of what they did, but merely because of who they were."

Background

The years after the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 were some of the most socially repressive in US history. Postwar anti-communist feelings became quickly associated with personal secrets of people who worked for the US government. Congress began to require the registration of members of "subversive groups." In 1950, the State Department identified homosexuals as security risks, and what followed was a succession of more repressive acts that included multiple firings of personnel working for federal, state and local governments who were suspected of being homosexual, politically motivated police raids on gay bars all over the US and Canada, and the enacting of laws prohibiting cross-dressing
Cross-dressing
Cross-dressing is the wearing of clothing and other accoutrement commonly associated with a gender within a particular society that is seen as different than the one usually presented by the dresser...

 for men and women.

History

In 1955, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon
Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon
Dorothy Louise Taliaferro "Del" Martin and Phyllis Ann Lyon were an American lesbian couple known as feminist and gay-rights activists...

 had been together as lovers for three years when they complained to a gay male couple that they did not know any other lesbians. The gay couple introduced Martin and Lyon to another lesbian couple, one of whom suggested they create a social club. In October 1955, eight women — four couples — met to provide each other with a social outlet. One of their priorities was to have a place to dance, as dancing with the same sex in a public place was illegal. Martin and Lyon recalled later, "Women needed privacy...not only from the watchful eye of the police, but from gaping tourists in the bars and from inquisitive parents and families." Although unsure of how exactly to proceed with the group, they began to meet regularly, realized they should be organized, and quickly elected Martin as president. From the start they had a clear focus to educate other women about lesbians, and reduce their self-loathing brought on by the socially repressive times.

Naming

The name of the newfound club was chosen in its second meeting. "Bilitis" is the name given to a fictional lesbian contemporary of Sappho
Sappho
Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...

, by the French poet Pierre Louÿs
Pierre Louÿs
Pierre Louÿs was a French poet and writer, most renowned for lesbian and classical themes in some of his writings. He is known as a writer who "expressed pagan sensuality with stylistic perfection."-Life:...

 in his 1894 work The Songs of Bilitis in which Bilitis was an Isle of Lesbos
Lesbos Island
Lesbos is a Greek island located in the northeastern Aegean Sea. It has an area of with 320 kilometres of coastline, making it the third largest Greek island. It is separated from Turkey by the narrow Mytilini Strait....

 alongside Sappho
Sappho
Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...

. The name was chosen for its obscurity; even Martin and Lyon did not know what it meant. "Daughters" was meant to evoke association with other American social associations such as the Daughters of the American Revolution
Daughters of the American Revolution
The Daughters of the American Revolution is a lineage-based membership organization for women who are descended from a person involved in United States' independence....

. Early DOB members felt they had to follow two contradictory approaches: trying to recruit interested potential members and being secretive. Martin and Lyon justified the name, writing later, "If anyone asked us, we could always say we belong to a poetry club." They also designed a pin to wear to be able to identify with others, chose club colors and voted on a motto
Motto
A motto is a phrase meant to formally summarize the general motivation or intention of a social group or organization. A motto may be in any language, but Latin is the most used. The local language is usual in the mottoes of governments...

 "Qui vive", French for "on alert". The organization filed a charter for non-profit corporation status in 1957, writing a description so vague, Phyllis Lyon remembered, "it could have been a charter for a cat-raising club."

Mission

Within a year of its creation, most of the original eight participants were no longer part of the group, but their numbers had grown to 16, and they decided they wanted to be more than only a social alternative to bars. Historian Marcia Gallo writes "They recognized that many women felt shame about their sexual desires and were afraid to admit them. They knew that...without support to develop the self-confidence necessary to advocate for one's rights, no social change would be possible for lesbians."

By 1959 there were chapters of the DOB in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, and Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...

 along with the original chapter in San Francisco. Upon arrival at a meeting, attendees would be greeted at the door. In a show of good faith, the greeter would say, "I'm ---. Who are you? You don't have to give me your real name, not even your real first name."

Soon after forming, the DOB wrote a mission statement that addressed the most significant problem Martin and Lyon had faced as a couple: the complete lack of information about female homosexuality in what historian Martin Meeker termed, "the most fundamental journey a lesbian has to make." When the club realized they were not allowed to advertise their meetings in the local newspaper, Lyon and Martin, who both had backgrounds in journalism, began to print a newsletter to distribute to as many women as the group knew. In October 1956 it became The Ladder
The Ladder (magazine)
The Ladder was the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States. It was published monthly from 1956 to 1970, and once every other month in 1971 and 1972. It was the primary publication and method of communication for the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian organization...

, the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the U.S. and one of the first to publish statistics on lesbians, when they mailed surveys to their readers in 1958 and 1964. Martin was the first president and Lyon became the editor of The Ladder.

The DOB advertised itself as "A Woman's Organization for the purpose of Promoting the Integration of the Homosexual into Society." The statement was composed of four parts that prioritized the purpose of the organization, and it was printed on the inside of the cover of every issue of The Ladder until 1970:

  1. Education of the variant...to enable her to understand herself and make her adjustment to society...this to be accomplished by establishing...a library...on the sex deviant theme; by sponsoring public discussions...to be conducted by leading members of the legal psychiatric, religious and other professions; by advocating a mode of behavior and dress acceptable to society.
  2. Education of the public...leading to an eventual breakdown of erroneous taboos and prejudices...
  3. Participation in research projects by duly authorized and responsible psychologists, sociologists, and other such experts directed towards further knowledge of the homosexual.
  4. Investigation of the penal code as it pertain to the homosexual, proposal of changes,...and promotion of these changes through the due process of law in the state legislatures."



New York chapter president Barbara Gittings
Barbara Gittings
Barbara Gittings was a prominent American activist for gay equality. She organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis from 1958 to 1963, edited the national DOB magazine The Ladder from 1963 to 1966, and worked closely with Frank Kameny in the 1960s on the first picket lines that...

 noted that the word "variant" was used instead of "lesbian" in the mission statement, because "lesbian" was a word that had a very negative meaning in 1956.

Methods

The early gay rights movement, then called the Homophile
Homophile
The word homophile is an alternative to the word for homosexual or gay. The homophile movement also refers to the gay rights movement of the 1950s and '60s....

 Movement, was developed by the Mattachine Society
Mattachine Society
The Mattachine Society, founded in 1950, was one of the earliest homophile organizations in the United States, probably second only to Chicago’s Society for Human Rights . Harry Hay and a group of Los Angeles male friends formed the group to protect and improve the rights of homosexuals...

, formed in 1950. Although the Mattachine Society began as a provocative organization with roots in its founders' communist activism, leadership of the Mattachine thought it more prudent and productive to convince heterosexual society at large that gays were not different from themselves, rather than agitate for change. They changed their tactics in 1953. The Daughters of Bilitis followed this model by encouraging its members to assimilate
Cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...

 as much as possible into the prevailing heterosexual culture.

This was reflected in ongoing debate over the propriety of butch and femme
Butch and femme
Butch and femme are LGBT terms describing respectively, masculine and feminine traits, behavior, style, expression, self-perception and so on. They are often used in the lesbian, bisexual and gay subcultures...

 dress and role play among its members. As early as 1955 a rule was made that women who attended meetings, if wearing pants, should be wearing women's slacks. However, many women remember it being a rule that went unfollowed as attendees at many meetings were wearing jeans, and the only jeans available in the 1950s were men's. Barbara Gittings recalled years later of an instance when, in preparation for a national convention, members of the DOB persuaded a woman who had worn men's clothing all her life, "to deck herself out in as 'feminine' a manner as she could...Everyone rejoiced over this as though some great victory had been accomplished...Today we would be horrified at anyone who thought this kind of evangelism had a legitimate purpose."

The Daughters of Bilitis were used as political fodder in the 1959 mayoral race in San Francisco. Russell Wolden, challenging incumbent
Incumbent
The incumbent, in politics, is the existing holder of a political office. This term is usually used in reference to elections, in which races can often be defined as being between an incumbent and non-incumbent. For example, in the 2004 United States presidential election, George W...

 George Christopher, distributed information implying that Christopher was making the city safe for "sex deviants". Wolden was responsible for materials that stated, "You parents of daughters — do not sit back complacently feeling that because you have no boys in your family everything is all right...To enlighten you as to the existence of a Lesbian organization composed of homosexual women, make yourself acquainted with the name Daughters of Bilitis." There were only two copies of the subscription list of The Ladder, a deliberate attempt to discourage its getting into the hands of anyone who might use it against the subscribers. DOB leaders moved the list from its headquarters to find later San Francisco police had searched the office after its removal. Even the FBI was curious enough to attend meetings to report in 1959, "The purpose of the DOB is to educate the public to accept the Lesbian homosexual into society."

National convention

In 1960, the DOB held their first convention in San Francisco, which was so successful that they held one every two years until 1968. Press releases announcing the convention were sent to local radio and newspapers, prompting the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

to direct a jab at Russell Wolden and publicize the convention when Herb Caen
Herb Caen
Herbert Eugene Caen was a Pulitzer Prize-winning San Francisco journalistwhose daily column of local goings-on, social and political happenings,...

 wrote, "Russ Wolden, if no one else, will be interested to learn that the Daughters of Bilitis will hold their nat'l convention here May 27–30. They're the female counterparts of the Mattachine Society — and one of the convention highlights will be an address by Atty. Morris Lowenthal titled, 'The Gay Bar in the Courts.' Oh brother. I mean sister. Come to think of it, I don't know what I mean..." The blurb was reprinted in the March issue of The Ladder.

Two hundred women attended the conference, as did the San Francisco police, who came to check if any of the DOB members were wearing men's clothes. Del Martin brought them inside to see all the women wearing dresses, stockings and heels. The attendees listened to speakers, including a debate between two attorneys about the legality and morality of gay bars, a presentation by the American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...

, and an Episcopal
Episcopal Church (United States)
The Episcopal Church is a mainline Anglican Christian church found mainly in the United States , but also in Honduras, Taiwan, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, the British Virgin Islands and parts of Europe...

 priest who "served up damnation with dessert", as he went on a "tirade" reminding the audience they were sinners, to which they listened politely. The DOB also gave awards to men who were allied with them, whom they called "Sons of Bilitis", or SOBs, including their lawyer, photographer, and members of the Mattachine Society who assisted them with the convention.

Change in direction

In 1960, letters from readers in The Ladder appeared that expressed exasperation with the emphasis on conformity in the DOB. In the 1970s, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon reflected that by contemporary standards, the early ideals of the DOB for integration and adjustment of the lesbian into society were outmoded, but they remembered that in the 1950s and early 1960s many gay men and lesbians considered those ideals unreachable, and this approach radical. The DOB never had the number of members comparable to the Mattachine Society's. Although some may have considered the DOB's ideals unrealistic, some also considered them too tame.

In 1961 the largest raid on a gay bar in San Francisco resulted in the arrests of 100 people, and the police forced women arrested in another raid in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 to disrobe to prove they were not wearing men's underwear, bringing a call in The Ladder to be more active. "If we ever hope to win our battle, we must fight. First, unshackle ourselves from fear, for it alone is our omnipresent enemy," read the report.

However, in 1962, at the Daughters' second convention, national president Jaye Bell again urged for the pragmatic approach of integration and patience with a slow criminal justice system. Two things happened in 1963 that changed the course of the organization. A windfall came to the group when an anonymous donor who refused her name to be recorded, known only to the DOB as "Pennsylvania," began donating large sums of money to the DOB: $100,000 over five years. "Pennsylvania" wrote $3,000 checks to different DOB members, who in turn signed them over to the organization. And the editorship of The Ladder changed from Del Martin to Barbara Gittings.

Because The Ladder was the primary method of communication from the leadership of the DOB to its individual chapters, the editor position was extremely influential in the group. Gittings made significant changes to the magazine, putting an emphasis on being more visible. One of Gitting's priorities was aligning the DOB with the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO), a coalition of other social and political clubs for gays and lesbians. Evidence of how impatient audiences were getting with psychiatrists telling them they were mentally ill was displayed in 1964 when at an ECHO convention, a featured speaker named Dr. Albert Ellis stated that "the exclusive homosexual is a psychopath" to which someone in the audience responded, "Any homosexual who would come to you for treatment, Dr. Ellis, would have to be a psychopath!" a comment that was met with applause.

In 1964, Martin and Lyon began to control less of the organization, saying, "We felt that if the organization had any validity at all it couldn't be based on two people, it had to be able to stand and grow on its own. And it was never going to do it if we didn't move out." Martin and Lyon joined the newly formed Council on Religion and the Homosexual
Council on Religion and the Homosexual
The Council on Religion and the Homosexual was a San Francisco-based organization founded in 1964 for the purpose of joining homosexual activists and religious leaders.-Formation:...

 (CRH) to develop a dialogue between organized religion and gays and lesbians. They urged the DOB to join the organization as well, but a previous rule precluding the DOB from joining separate organizations (set in place primarily to ensure it would not join organizations that sympathized with Communist aims) precluded it from doing so.

The Homophile Movement was influenced by the successful activism of the Civil Rights Movement (in 1960 the DOB's national president was Cleo Bonner, an African-American), and higher profile members of the DOB such as Barbara Gittings, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon began to picket the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

, the State Department, and other federal buildings in 1965 and 1966 with members of the Mattachine Society. Gittings, as editor of The Ladder, encouraged others to do the same, and their activism became controversial in the leadership of the DOB. Gittings also ran a regular column in The Ladder that she called "Living Propaganda", encouraging women to come out to their friends and family members. It often included contributions from Frank Kameny urging political action. Some readers responded positively to Kameny, who in a speech declared homosexuals as normal as heterosexuals; some were put off by the political tone, and some were angered by Kameny, as a man, suggesting to them what they do. DOB leaders disliked Kameny and the decisions Gittings was making for the magazine and she was "let go" as editor in 1966.

Rise of feminism

Del Martin has written that the Daughters of Bilitis was a feminist organization from the beginning, focusing on the problems of women as well as problems of the female homosexual; however, in the mid 1960s feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

 became a much higher priority to many of the women in the organization. In 1966, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon joined the National Organization for Women
National Organization for Women
The National Organization for Women is the largest feminist organization in the United States. It was founded in 1966 and has a membership of 500,000 contributing members. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S...

, and urged readers of The Ladder to do the same, even reporting they got a family discount. Historian Martin Meeker points to the 1966 DOB convention that was a 10-day affair joining the DOB with the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations
North American Conference of Homophile Organizations
The North American Conference of Homophile Organizations was an umbrella organization for a number of homophile organizations. Founded in 1966, the goal of NACHO was to expand coordination among homophile organizations throughout the Americas. Homophile activists were motivated in part by an...

 (NACHO) as the turning point where women's issues in the DOB began to have more importance to its members than gay issues. It was the largest convention DOB had yet organized, publicized in mass media all over San Francisco, attended by a large panel of nationally-known speakers, and many of the presentations focused on topics that were exclusively male-centered.

A November 1966 essay by DOB president Shirley Willer pointed out the differences in problems faced by gay men and lesbians: gay men dealt more with police harassment, entrapment
Entrapment
In criminal law, entrapment is conduct by a law enforcement agent inducing a person to commit an offense that the person would otherwise have been unlikely to commit. In many jurisdictions, entrapment is a possible defense against criminal liability...

, solicitation
Solicitation
Literally, solicitation means: 'urgently asking'. It is the action or instance of soliciting; petition; proposal. In criminal law, it most commonly refers to either the act of offering goods or services, or the act of attempting to purchase such goods or services...

, sex in public places, and until recently few women were being arrested for cross-dressing
Cross-dressing
Cross-dressing is the wearing of clothing and other accoutrement commonly associated with a gender within a particular society that is seen as different than the one usually presented by the dresser...

. Willer pointed out the problems specific to lesbians were job security and advancement, and family relationships, child custody, and visitation. Feeling as if their issues were not being addressed by homophile organizations, many members of the DOB began to say that lesbians had more in common with heterosexual women than men.

The Daughters were also affected by the changing times. Younger members did not share the concerns with older members; they were more moved by revolutionary tactics. Problems in the organization of the national governing board were becoming increasingly worse when local chapters were unable to take action on issues important to them without the approval of the national board. Members became disillusioned and left, and younger lesbians were more attracted to join feminist organizations. By the time the 1968 convention was held in Denver, less than two dozen women attended.

Controversial ending

Editing The Ladder was truly a full time job. Longtime DOB member Helen Sandoz, who had taken over editing it after an interim period after Barbara Gittings left, was so burdened by the responsibilities that it was affecting her relationship. She passed it on to Barbara Grier
Barbara Grier
Barbara Grier was an American writer and publisher most widely known for co-founding Naiad Press and writing and editing The Ladder under the pseudonym Gene Damon.-Early life:...

 in 1968, who had been contributing to the magazine as a book reviewer and poetry writer. Grier edited the magazine from Kansas City and was a relative newcomer to the workings of the DOB, despite contributing to the magazine since 1957.

Grier had high aspirations for The Ladder. She removed "A Lesbian Review" from the cover, placed there in 1964 by Gittings, to attract more women readers. She doubled the size of the magazine, expanding every section, and devoted much of the space in the magazine to feminist ideals. She reported the first DOB chapter in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 in 1969 and attempts to form chapters in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 and Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...

. In 1970, convinced that the DOB was falling apart and The Ladder must be saved, Barbara Grier worked with DOB president Rita LaPorte to take the subscriber list from the DOB headquarters in San Francisco to Reno
Reno
Reno is the fourth most populous city in Nevada, US.Reno may also refer to:-Places:Italy*The Reno River, in Northern ItalyCanada*Reno No...

 and expand the magazine further.

Only two copies of the list of subscribers existed; every year an assurance was printed in The Ladder to women nervous that their name on a list would be taken and used against them. Rita LaPorte took the list of 3,800 names from DOB headquarters and from the printers without telling anyone but Grier. When Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon discovered its loss, they assumed the police or FBI had confiscated it. Previous editors Martin, Lyon, Gittings, and Sandoz considered the act a theft. Because LaPorte took the list over state lines, pursuing it would have been a federal matter, and the Daughters did not have the resources to see it through. Grier severed ties with DOB leadership and in doing so took away the Daughters' primary method of communication from the national organization to its individual chapters. As a national organization, the Daughters of Bilitis folded in 1970, although some local chapters still continue. Grier also effectively ended The Ladder, despite her plans for the magazine to run on advertising (something The Ladder had not previously had) and subscriptions, when the $3,000 checks from "Pennsylvania", written to the DOB, stopped coming. By 1972, The Ladder had run out of funds and it folded.

Dozens of other lesbian and feminist organizations were created in the wake of the Daughters of Bilitis. However, the impact of the fourteen-year run of the DOB on the lives of women was described by historian Martin Meeker: "The DOB succeeded in linking hundreds of lesbians across the country with one another and gathering them into a distinctly modern communication network that was mediated through print and, consequently, imagination, rather than sight, sound, smell, and touch.

See also

  • Lesbian American history
    Lesbian American history
    Lesbian American history addresses the history of lesbians in the United States. Primary resources for lesbian American history are scant.-1600 to 1900:...

  • Ruth Simpson
    Ruth Simpson
    Ruth Simpson was the founder of the United States' first lesbian community center, an author, and former president of Daughters of Bilitis, New York....

  • Daughters of Bilitis (Australia)
    Daughters of Bilitis (Australia)
    The Australian arm of the Daughters of Bilitis was formed in Melbourne in late 1969, and is considered Australia's first gay rights group. It was inspired by the American Daughters of Bilitis movement...

  • Minorities Research Group
    Minorities Research Group
    The Minorities Research Group was the first organisation to openly advocate the interests of lesbians in the United Kingdom. It was founded by four women who got together in response to an article that was published in the magazine "Twentieth Century"...

     - A UK group of the same period.
  • The Ladder (Magazine)
    The Ladder (magazine)
    The Ladder was the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States. It was published monthly from 1956 to 1970, and once every other month in 1971 and 1972. It was the primary publication and method of communication for the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian organization...


External links


Further reading

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