"How Many Lesbians Does it Take to Screw in a Light Bulb?"*
Janet Bing and Dana Heller, Old Dominion University
The question, "How many lesbians does it take to screw in a light bulb," evokes a well known type of joke, and, like other jokes of its kind, raises different expectations for different groups. One punch line is: "Seven. One to change it, three to organize the potluck, and three to film an empowering documentary." The humor of this punch line might escape heterosexuals, gays and lesbians from other countries, or anyone who has little knowledge of the development of gay and lesbian culture in the United States. Contrary to the widely recognizable structure of the lightbulb joke, the less familiar "in-group" knowledge required for understanding the humor is precisely what gives the joke value as one of the means by which lesbians come to recognize themselves. Like many of the jokes created by lesbians for lesbians, this joke assumes the expectations and definitions of the lesbian community rather than those of the dominant culture. Some of the humor derives from the fact that the joke takes a mainstream format and uses it to acknowledge, ignore, and ultimately undermine attempts by the mainstream culture to define lesbians. Like the humor of other groups, lesbian humor affirms the values, beliefs and politics of the in-group and forms part of a shared stock of stories and myths that help form, disseminate, and preserve an imagined community.
The shared culture behind Lesbian Humor
Is there a shared culture behind lesbian humor or is such a thing as "lesbian community" an imagined, rather than actual community? As Susan Wolfe and Julia Penelope (2000: 382) have observed, lesbian humor of the 1970s and 80s tended to presuppose that lesbians saw themselves as participants in a homogeneous lesbian culture and had more or less similar experiences. Thus, Alix Dobkin could once joke that lesbians can always identify each other because "We all have the same junk on top of our dressers: crystals, shells, labryses, odd feathers, river rocks." (Wolfe and Penelope, 2000: 381). Her comment assumes shared experiences (even for lesbians who might not keep such objects on their dressers). It mitigates against the isolation and invisibility that lesbians experience in a homophobic society that has, until recently, denied their presence. In this way, lesbian 'in-group" jokes constitute an imagined cultural community, enabling even those lesbians who may live "in the closet" to construct an image of belonging.(1) Humor written by and for lesbians can take a number of different forms, including verbal jokes, graphic cartoons, comic books and "zines," theater and skits, literature, musical lyrics, stand-up comedy, independent cinema, and witty slogans found on buttons, T-shirts, and bumper stickers. While the forms themselves may be universal, their adaptation to an exclusive vocabulary of lesbian codes, experiences, and referents becomes part of the process by which lesbian humor helps lesbians negotiate their contradictory social location both inside and outside the so-called "mainstream" culture and its values.
What is lesbian humor?
As with any attempt to define a sub-genre of humor, an attempt to define the terms "lesbian joke" or "lesbian humor" is not simple. In early May of 2002, a search of the web on google.com for the topic "Lesbian joke" resulted in 113,000 hits, and one for "lesbian humor" resulted in 250,000 hits, with many of the sites maintained for and by lesbians. This suggests that these terms have meaning for quite a few people. However, a closer look at these sites suggests that the terms have different values for different audiences. These differences reflect the tensions of a contradictory and highly fragmented cultural climate in which lesbianism may represent a consumer demographic, a genetic predisposition, a dangerous moral threat, a vanguard of liberal civil rights activism, an erotic fantasy of male heterosexuality, or some combination thereof. "Lesbian joke" may thus be defined as the articulation of an out-group whose legitimization depends on the construction of the lesbian as "other," an object of humor whose difference emphasizes the opposition of female homosexuality to standards of so-called normality. At the same time, "lesbian joke" or "lesbian humor" may be defined by an in-group of lesbians who claim the right of self-definition. Lesbian jokes acknowledge and reject the definition of lesbian as "other," and by noting the self-sufficiency of lesbians, judge society's standards of normality to be irrelevant and artificial.
In an article about lesbian comic-book characters, Robin Queen (1997:233) assumes a lesbian audience for the comics she discusses. She claims that these comic book characters "play on commonly held stereotypes accessible to queers in general and lesbians specifically. . . The characters are all created by lesbians for a predominantly lesbian audience, and thus the characters' believability relies on social knowledge that is assumed to be shared." For example, in Roberta Gregory's comic book series, Bitchy Butch: World's Angriest Dyke (1999:6) the hero, a butch lesbian named Ronnie (aka Bitchy Butch) is routinely enraged by heterosexual sales persons who refer to her as "sir." She goes ballistic when she learns that a former lesbian acquaintance has begun dating a man, and she nostalgically longs for the old days of lesbian-feminism when butch dykes had pride and when women "knew what sisterhood was all about." At one point, she moodily questions her own legitimacy as a dyke upon realizing that she has not had a date for over two years. Bitchy Butch seems to live in a perpetual state of pre-menstrual syndrome, and she does not see herself or her oppression in patriarchal society as amusing. On one hand, it is her irrepressible rage and her inability to laugh at herself that makes her character accessible and believable to gay and lesbian audiences. At the same time, these qualities make her funny, as Roberta Gregory, herself appearing as a cartoon character in the prologue to her fifth collection, explains to Bitchy (1999:2): "I think the humor comes from the fact that often there ARE individuals who represent the most extreme characteristics presented as a stereotype of a group."
Holmes (2000:67) proposes that humor is "intended by the speaker(s) to be amusing and perceived to be amusing by at least some participants." However, in the case of lesbian jokes, the amusement of the participants will vary, depending on their familiarity with lesbian culture, history, and community. By analogy to Raskin's (1985:205-209) concept of ethnic jokes, lesbian jokes might be defined as those in which the main opposition involves a script ( Raskin 1985:chapter 4) involving at least two women in a same-sex relationship. However, as the above example demonstrates, lesbian humor may also derive from the blurriness of sexual scripts, the instability of the identity categories on which we depend, and the anxieties this instability produces. Bitchy Butch asks if one can rightly consider herself a lesbian if she has not been with a woman for over two years; is a celibate lesbian an oxymoron? Unlike ethnicity, the truth of sexual desire cannot be tacitly referenced by a dialect, national characteristic or metonymic name such as O'Brien or McTaggert. How then can we define true lesbian jokes? Hemplemann (2001) makes a distinction between "true" Christian jokes, which would not be funny without a Christian script, and jokes which just happen to use Christians, but which would be funny even if the characters were replaced by members of another group. We might then assume a similar definition for "true lesbian jokes," that is, jokes which would not be funny in a different context. For example, if you substitute the word "nun" for "lesbian" in the lightbulb joke, it is still a possible joke, but it is not funny.
In many cases, the gay community and the heterosexual community have different conventional definitions of lesbian joke. In most jokes told about lesbians by heterosexuals, the scripts activated by the term lesbian joke are usually sex scripts with references to oral sex between women. This might explain why news reports of former Senator Bob Kerrey telling lesbian jokes to former President Bill Clinton at a New York restaurant in 2001 was widely reported and deplored in the media as being in poor taste (Sigesmund, 2001). The assumption that lesbian jokes are jokes about oral sex also seems to predominate in Internet chat rooms when the topic of lesbian jokes arises. By this definition, the lightbulb joke would not qualify as a lesbian joke because it refers to potluck dinners and empowering documentaries rather than to sex. The expectations for lesbian jokes told to lesbian and heterosexual audiences are thus different.
Lesbian jokes as self-defining
While lesbian humor, like any type of humor, may help construct a sense of coherent community and identity, it is our contention that the jokes that lesbians share are, at the same time, inherently deconstructive, in the sense that they challenge the very idea of "lesbian" as a discreet identity and "lesbian community" as a coherent social formation. As Gever and Magnan (1991:67) say: "An enormous rift exists between how we are portrayed and portray ourselves as deviant women in patriarchal, heterosexist societies and how we function and represent ourselves within our own subculture." The challenge to outsiders' definitions of "lesbian" became especially apparent in the 1990s, as political and academic debates over the definition-- and, indeed, even the existence of "lesbian identity"-- led to the study of sexualities as multiple and "queer," a move which produced a far more diverse notion of "lesbian community" (Rudy, 2000). Lesbian jokes began to challenge the images upon which straight society-and even some lesbians--based its assumptions of who lesbians are and what they do. Lesbian jokes became more visibly aimed at demonstrating that "lesbian" itself is an externally constructed category of identity, a fiction, that has been used by some in the interests of identity politics, and by others in the interests of demonizing and disenfranchising lesbians.
For example, lesbian humor often works to challenge the dominant culture's negative sexualization of lesbians, or the dehumanizing reduction of the lesbian to sexual actor. Some lesbian jokes present a challenge to the homo/hetero divide by demonstrating the arbitrary and contradictory behaviors that make lesbians as a group impossible to define, to fix, and to recognize only in terms of a sex act. For example, almost all lesbians have heard this joke,
(1) Question: What does a lesbian bring on the second date?
Answer: A U-Haul.
When one of the authors told this joke to a group of self-identified heterosexual academics, nobody in the group "got" the joke, and when asked about how they interpreted it, one male reported that he assumed that the purpose of the U-haul was so that one of the women could leave her husband for a lesbian relationship. For him, clearly, the joke was mystifying rather than funny.
This joke is funny to lesbians, and to anyone who is familiar with complex emotional dynamics of lesbian courtship, because it challenges the tendency to reduce lesbianism to physiology, redefining it instead in terms of the emotional euphoria that often compels lesbian coupling. The joke plays on the idea that lesbians tend to disregard bourgeois courtship rituals and jump into "marriages" quickly and impulsively, acting on feeling rather than reason. The question that leads into the joke sets up an expectation: What does a lesbian bring on a second date? Listeners will very likely begin thinking about sex toys, sexual paraphernalia, or objects that carry sexual reference. However, what makes the joke funny is that it thwarts these expectations, establishing no frame of reference for what lesbians do in bed, but rather what they do at home. In other words, the joke defines lesbianism as ultimately domestic in its aims, geared toward the establishment of a household. This is what Raskin (1985:149) would call a "standard opposition of a non-sex-related script with a sex-related script.
The U-Haul joke also plays on the idea that lesbians are self-reliant. Lesbians don't call movers; they rent U-Hauls and move themselves. Thus, what makes this joke funny for lesbians is that it undermines the externally imposed definition of lesbianism. It shows lesbians the extent to which they themselves are conditioned to expect certain kinds of responses based on homophobic or sexist stereotypes in a society that refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the families and partnerships that lesbians form with one another.
Because the humor in this joke comes from replacing a sexual script with a non-sexual one, like much of lesbian humor, this joke is the opposite of much of the sexual humor discussed in chapter 5 of Raskin (1985). A script switch is common for much of sexual humor, but in most cases, a non-sexual script is introduced, and a switch is made to a sexual script, as the following well-known joke discussed extensively in Raskin (1985:100ff).
(2) ?Is the doctor at home?? the patient asked in his bronchial whisper.
?No,? the doctor?s young and pretty wife whispered in reply. ?Come right in.?
By contrast, the humor in many lesbian jokes is just the opposite with the expectation of a sexual frame being replaced by a non-sexual frame, as in the light bulb joke and the U-Haul joke. One reason for this might because of the stereotyped expectation that a lesbian joke is about sex. For example, when speaking about jokes to a local chapter of the American Association of University Women, one of the authors discussed this joke by Kate Clinton. (3) "If women should have to be in the military service, they should only be lesbians who process. We would never get around to having a war. A war? You get the beaches wheelchair-accessible, then we'll talk."
Only one or two women in the fairly large audience laughed; the majority simply looked puzzled. One woman raised her hand and said, "I don't get it. What does this joke have to do with sex?" A number of other women in the audience nodded agreement with the questioner. As with the U-haul joke, the frame or expectation for "lesbian" for many in this audience included an expectation of sex. For more savvy listeners, however, Kate Clinton's use of the word 'lesbian' evokes a more complex set of values and preferences, values that include compassion for the disabled ("You get the beaches wheelchair-accessible) and a rejection of the importance placed on war by the military-industrial complex.
Another common belief about lesbians is that they possess "gay-dar," or some secret, intuitive way of recognizing and zeroing in on each other. A number of lesbian humorists explore the question of how lesbians recognize each other. Lea Delaria (1995: 64) makes this observation:
(4) Q: I've seen this woman I really like, but I have no idea how to approach her.
A: This is THE perfect lesbian question. Lesbians have no idea how to approach each other. If lesbians had to procreate, there would be no people in this world.
However, Sara Cytron and Harriet Malinowitz (in Flowers 1995: 39-40) have this to offer:
(5) Sometimes you meet a woman and you 'think' she's a lesbian, but you're not really sure. So we have these little exchanges in code. Like you might casually say, "You know anybody driving to Provincetown this summer? With her cat?"....... But an easier way to find out is to go to someone's apartment, look inside her kitchen cabinet, and count how many Celestial Seasonings herbal teas she has. If there are more than six, she's probably a lesbian."
Shelley Robert has similar advice for the same problem, including:
(6) Ask to see the prints in her wallet ... should she produce prints of her pussycats, Hepsabah & Egregious, erase all scintilla of doubt from your mind. The more kitty color prints, the surer you can be. Don`t let pictures of tiny tykes or grandtykes fool you. Many dykes have tykes. Cat pictures ... You want to know ask to see the feline photos. (Quoted at http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/ip/sigs/life/gay/dating/detect )
How are these ordinary domestic interests any different from those of heterosexuals? In fact, they aren't, but if the heterosexual community accepted this similarity, it would be more difficult to categorize lesbians as "the other."
Lesbian jokes as challenging strict categorization
One significant aspect of homophobia is that it requires a clear division between the orientations of homosexuality and heterosexuality. One aspect of lesbian jokes is that they destabilize this homo/hetero opposition and show it to be a fiction. This fiction, circulated through the media is anything but harmless; it is a means of politically barring gays and lesbians from attaining full social rights. In the United States it is still the case that most lesbians have no protection at work and can lose their jobs or even their lives simply by being identifiable as lesbian. Although most leading psychological and medical institutions no longer regard lesbianism as a deviant orientation, it was in fact the notion of disease that gave ontological distinction to the category "lesbian," an invention by medical specialists of the 19th century who sought to classify and categorize deviant social types. Despite post-Stonewall advances,2 the category has retained its association with illness and deviance to the extent that some state courts have felt justified in taking children away from lesbian mothers, as in the 1993 case Bottoms vs. Bottoms in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
This routine by Robin Tyler cleverly deconstructs this underlying assumption of essential differences.
(7) "If homosexuality is a disease, let's all call in queer to work.
"'Hello, can't work today. Still queer.'"
The joke suggests ways in which queers might use sanctioned homophobia against itself in a manner consistent with De Certeau's (1974) notion of poaching, or the everyday tactic by which workers beat the system at its own rules for their own enjoyment. What's funny about the joke, of course, is that everyone--gay or straight--has probably at least one time called in sick for work when in fact he or she was not sick. The twist, however, is that Clinton highlights the absurdity of the idea of homosexuality as "sickness" by taking to an extreme the illogic inherent in that assumption. Indeed, being "queer" is a condition that one does not recuperate from after a day or two of bed rest and plenty of liquids. Clinton's humor turns the marginalization and discrimination that gays and lesbians often encounter within the labor system against that very system.
Although "lesbian" was originally defined as deviance, clearly lesbians do not recognize themselves in the definitions or names imposed from the outside. Lesbian jokes are often jokes that implicitly ask: Am I that name? By positioning lesbian identity and community simultaneously inside and outside the expectations of a dominant culture, these jokes create a cultural self-awareness not unlike W.E.B. DuBois's (2002) famous "double consciousness" of the African American, or the "sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of the other, and measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity." Lesbian jokes both reflect and resist the dominant cultural definitions and they suggest a self-awareness that is far more mobile, decentered, and contradictory than is generally assumed.
Differences between Lesbian and Feminist Humor
Just as lesbian jokes challenge the essential hetero/homosexual division, many feminist jokes challenge the essential male/female division, and for the same reasons. Sandra Bem (1993) shows how women have been denied their rights because of biological essentialism ( the belief that all men and women are essentially different), strict categorization (the belief that all members of a category share certain inherent characteristics), and gender polarization, "the ubiquitous organization of social life around the distinction between male and female." Like gender polarization, homo-/hetero-polarization establishes (in the words of Bem, p.2) "a cultural connection . . . between sex and virtually every other aspect of human experience," including those that have nothing to do with sex. Similarly, biological determinism (the belief that biology is destiny) suggests that these groups are categorically different, and thus should be treated differently on the basis of category membership rather than on the basis of individual abilities.
Despite the similarities in their relationships to more powerful groups, women who identify themselves primarily as feminists, and those who identify themselves primarily as lesbians (not always mutually exclusive groups) tend to challenge the dominant group in different ways. Much of feminist humor makes fun of male behavior and thus emphasizes differences between males and females (Bing, 2001), as in the following three jokes taken from a web page called "Let's Insult Men!".
(8) How can you tell if a man is sexually excited?
IF HE IS BREATHING
(9) How many men does it take to change a roll of toilet paper?
WE DON'T KNOW. IT'S NEVER BEEN DONE
(10) What is a man's idea of helping with the housework?
LIFTING HIS LEG FOR YOU TO VACUUM UNDER IT
All of these jokes criticize men, challenging male illusions of superiority, but by doing so, they also make men central. Lesbian jokes are usually different. Unlike feminist jokes, which often point out the foibles and deficiencies of men, most lesbian jokes make little or no reference to men or to injustices imposed by a heterosexual- and male-dominated society. As a group, lesbian jokes such as the following, often ignore the heterosexual community, including the oppression, harassment and violence that have historically been directed against lesbians. Here, for example, are some widely quoted lines from Robert's Rules of Lesbian Dating (1998).
(11) It is never a good idea to ask someone to marry you before the first date. (p.1)
A lesbian date usually lasts at least three years. (p.6)
A lesbian one-night stand, on the other hand, is over in mere months. (p.7)
If you have to talk about your ex, giver your date equal time to talk about hers.
That way each of you will be bored only about half the time. (pp. 52-53)
Arousal, attraction, complete panic, love and OD'ing on Hershey Bars all feel pretty much the same.
They do not, however, call for exactly the same response regardless of which one you are enjoying. (pp.118-119)
Like the lightbulb joke and the U-haul joke, these lines reference and satirize the lesbian community, and make no reference to men or the straight community. There are some lesbian jokes that are openly anti-male; however, they tend to be in the minority, like Suzanne Westenhoefer's response to a heckler who wanted to know if she got "that way" because she had some sort of bad sexual experience with a guy. Westenhoefer (1995:181) responded,
". . . Yeah-like, if that's all it took, the entire female population would be gay, sir, and I'd be here talking about the weather, all right?" .
More typical, however, are Chris Lanter's (n.d.) "10 Questions Most Commonly Asked of Lesbians and the Answers You`ll never Hear."
(12) Q: What exactly, do two women do together? (Usually asked by a woman)
A: It takes too long to explain. A lesbian quickie lasts hours. We lay there and discuss politics until we figure it out. But if you like I`ll show you. How about this evening at six?
(13) Q: Which one of you is the man? (Usually asked by a man)
A: We're lesbian, not confused. Look it up!
Although they make fun of the discomfort and ignorance of heterosexuals, these two jokes still keep lesbians central. Addressing women, Barecca (1963: 193) emphasizes "the importance of defining and using our own humor" and claims that humor is "a powerful way to make ourselves heard." (p. 202) Lesbian humor provides a good model for self-definition and affirmation. At the same time, lesbian jokes reject the idea that lesbian culture needs to be heard or affirmed by outsiders.
There are exceptions, of course. Hothead Paisan, Homicidal, Lesbian Terrorist, a well-known fore-runner of the above-mentioned Bitchy Butch, leaves a trail of bloodied male body parts as she rages against the absurdity and injustices of the dominant culture, but her outbursts stand in sharp contrast to the tolerant behavior of her cat, Chicken, and her mentor, Roz, both of whom concentrate on their own interests and show none of Hothead Paisan's obsession with and fury against the straight community (1999).As in the case of Butchy Butch, Hothead Paisan allows the lesbian community to laugh at an extreme stereotype.
Although lesbian jokes tend to ignore the male/female divide, they do not ignore the masculine/feminine divide, as the dynamics of gendering within lesbian communities is part of a long, rich cultural tradition. For example:
(14) Question What can two femmes do in bed?
Answer: Each other's makeup. (Delaria 1995: 63)
On one hand, this joke functions to acknowledge the on-going vitality of butch/femme role play in lesbian communities, an aspect of lesbian culture that has been criticized by straight feminists as an example of lesbian internalization of patriarchal gender oppression. The joke ignores that critique and engages with gender politics that are highly specific to lesbian communities. Specifically, it reflects the commonly held butch perception of femmes as essentially narcissistic, sexually incompatible with one another, and thus dependent on butches for "true" sexual satisfaction. This joke, like so many other "in-group" lesbian jokes, participates in the debates that were generated by the 1980s "sex wars," a time when divisions between feminist prescriptions for "politically correct" sex were sharply rejected by sex-positive lesbian activists, many of whom had formed new political coalitions with gay men in response to the AIDS crisis.
If Being Lesbian isn't Primarily about Sex, Why are There So Many Jokes About Sex?
Having claimed that lesbian jokes are about much more than sex, we now want to consider why so many lesbian jokes do focus on sex, specifically on lesbian oral sex. For example:
(15) Question: Why can't lesbians go on a diet and wear makeup at the same time?
Answer: You can't eat Jenny Craig with Mary Kay on your face.
Although this joke refers quite explicitly to lesbian oral sex, it also evokes and criticizes a culture that commodifies women's bodies and eroticizes their engagements with consumer culture. There are countless examples of such jokes, a good example of which is Kate Clinton's recollections of her Catholic girlhood and her gratitude for the strength and dexterity that her tongue developed from manipulating the communion wafer in her mouth. Here, we might say, to paraphrase Catharine MacKinnon, that feminist humor is the epistemology of which lesbian humor is the ontology.
In other words, lesbian humor refuses the political erasure of lesbian bodies. By actively writing the lesbian body into existence and by acknowledging its pleasures, lesbian humor defies the homophobic violence that is so often enacted on lesbian bodies, as was the case with two lesbian campers murdered in a Virginia state park (Price 2000)3. Lesbian jokes that make unhesitating use of the otherwise vulgar slang designating female genitalia, or jokes that refer to lesbian orality, tongues, acts of oral sex are jokes that claim the body as somehow central to lesbian experience and resist the limits imposed on gay and lesbian language and bodies. Such jokes are enactments of the feminist belief that the personal is the political. Moreover, they create a connection between orality as a condition of public speech acts and orality as a condition of private sex acts. Lesbian sexual pleasure is thus understood as an extension of lesbian communication and the imagining of community. By humorous references to oral sex, lesbians affirm their rights not only to private sex, but also to public representation.
The shared culture behind Lesbian Humor
Lesbian communities may be imagined, but this does not mean that they are imaginary. Despite multiple differences of race, ethnicity, gender-orientation, age, gender-orientation and class, there is evidence for a lesbian humor community in the sense of Carrell (1997), and such a humor community helps explain the popularity of Shelly Roberts, Kate Clinton, Suzanne Westerman and Diane DiMassa as well as the existence of anthologies of gay and lesbian humor such as Larson and Carr (1990) and Flowers (1995). Although "culture" has been defined as total way of life including "shared behavior patterns, values, norms and material objects," (Rogers and Steinfatt, 1999: 79), it has also been defined as the sum total of stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves (Clifford Geertz 1973). Humor represents one of the story-telling modes that contribute to cultural formations. Given the diversity among lesbians, the fact that lesbian lives have often been lived in secret, and that the fact that lesbian relationships have often been erased from history, a lesbian culture has been difficult to imagine let alone legitimize. Culture includes shared knowledge of a set of values and assumptions, and these values are negotiated not only through social contacts, but also through various media, including films, T.V., songs, and various forms of humor, including jokes. Needless to say, it is necessary to understand both the culture and the shared values in order to understand the jokes and find them funny.
That said, we will conclude this paper by revisiting the question of our title,"How many lesbians does it take to screw in a light bulb?" The answer "Seven. One to change it, three to organize the potluck, and three to film an empowering documentary" reveals a lesbian community different from popular stereotypes. For a community whose very visibility and survival has depended largely on its ability to continuously organize itself, document itself, feed itself, and attend to its internal conflicts and inequities, this joke will refer at once to the miracle of lesbian survival and to the obsessions that are the price that has been paid for survival. However, just as important as what the joke includes is what it does not include. It includes no references to men or to harassment or oppression. It presupposes a self-empowering self-conscious community based on cooperative principles. It does not even share the wider community's equation of "lesbian" with "sex," "screwing" in light bulbs notwithstanding.
Notes:
* The authors are listed alphabetically and contributed equally to this paper. We would like to thank the following people for comments on earlier versions of this paper: John Broderick, Caroline Dunlop, Charles Ruhl, Joanne Scheibman, and Heidi Schlipphacke.
1. Here we are invoking (and extending) Benedict Anderson's (1991) definition of nation as "imagined community," a definition which has been widely applied in analyzing the particular styles according to which political communities based on ethnicity, race, religion, and sexuality are imagined.
2. "Stonewall" refers to the event which many historians regard as a landmark in the 20th century Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights Movement. In June, 1969, the Stonewall Inn, a New York City bar frequented by gay, lesbian, and transgender clientele became an international symbol of gay militancy when, for the first time, homosexual patrons fought back against New York City police who came to raid the bar and arrest gay individuals.
3.In April 2002, Darrel Rice was indicted for the murder of Lollie Winans and Julie Williams and was charged with four counts of capital murder, two of which allege that he murdered the women specifically because they were lesbian.
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