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First And Last Chance: Looking For Lesbians In California's Fifties Bar Cases, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

Do all of us who choose members of our own sex as objects of desire and as sexual partners share some meaningful common identity, such as “homosexual,” “gay” or perhaps “queer”? The classifications “homosexual” and “gay” claim for themselves just that kind of inclusiveness; that is, that the gay world includes people of all races, all classes and any possible gender identity. You, me, James Baldwin, Gertrude Stein, J. Edgar Hoover: we are all gay together. In this way “homosexual” or “gay” is a generic term, like, for example, “human being.” But we know that the alleged inclusiveness masks just …