LGBT History

LGBT history has had a pretty serious gender problem in a couple of different senses. First, while this field owes a lot conceptually to feminism, understanding gender subordination has not been a priority for LGBT history. There have been some exceptions: the author thinks of Craig Loftin's marvelous exploration of homophile hostility to the swish as one example. Second, LGBT history has been and continues to be predominantly and unapologetically about male experience. Indeed, as the field of women's history has to some degree receded, this is perhaps even more true now than it once was. And as the ick and squirm reaction to the work happily diminishes, writing about lesbians remains one of the riskiest projects that can be undertaken in the academy today. This will remain true, quite obviously, until men in this field take up the project of writing women into their studies.