Surface Tension Love, Sex, and Politics Between Lesbians and Straight Women

by Daly, Meg

• ISBN13: 9780684802213
• ISBN10: 068480221X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-01-18
• Publisher: Touchstone

Summary

Representing diverse views and voices, the essays, short stories, and interviews in this collection explore the spectrum of feelings and opinions about being a lesbian, the friendships women share—or fear—and the rich diversity of personal choices women make today.

This anthology is filled with personal narratives that explore a particular friendship or perspective on relationships between women of different sexualities. Editor Meg Daly breaks the essays, interviews, and stories into six different sections—"Best Friends”; “Romantic Love”; “Curiosity, Desire, and Sex”; “On Passing and Solidarity”; “Blurred Boundaries or Which One Is the Lesbian?”; and “Visibility, Community, and Our Separate Spheres.” These stories explore personal experiences of life as a lesbian, close friendships, queer theory, and LGBTQ history. In Dorothy Allison’s story “Conceptional Lesbianism,” she lends a historical perspective to straight-lesbian relationships in the 1970s, and she examines on what it means to be a lesbian. Lisa Springer reflects on the period in her adolescence when she wasn’t aware of her attraction to women in “Between Girls.” In “Kat,” Guinevere Turner on the pain of reconciling one's sexual orientation with past relationships.

A wide range of experiences, perspectives, and diverse voices come together in this anthology to explore the pain, joy, humor, and beauty of life as a lesbian.

Author Biography

Meg Daly is the editor of the anthology Surface Tension: Love, Sex and Politics Between Lesbians and Straight Women.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 9
Best Friends
Between Girls	p. 17
"How We Met": An Interview with Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan	p. 29
Kat by Guinevere Turner	p. 34
Like Cutting Off My Arm	p. 38
Working Out	p. 47
Romantic Love
Can't Help It	p. 55
Lifeline	p. 64
Till Men Do Us Part	p. 70
The Kick Inside	p. 82
Curiosity, Desire, and Sex
What Is It About Straight Women?	p. 95
A Closet of One's Own: On Not Becoming a Lesbian	p. 99
Wives	p. 111
An excerpt from Trilogy	p. 126
On Passing and Solidarity
Queer in the Streets, Straight in the Sheets: Notes on Passing	p. 133
Conceptual Lesbianism	p. 142
Photographs and My Faux-Lesbian Body	p. 151
Almost a Dyke: In Search of the Perfect Bisexual	p. 160
Blurred Boundaries, or Which One Is the Lesbian?
The Queer Kitchen	p. 169
The Old Age Home	p. 175
Sharing the Bathroom	p. 178
Low Cut	p. 186
Visibility, Community, and Our Separate Spheres
Interview with Jessica Hagedorn	p. 197
The (Fe)male Gaze	p. 202
If Only I'd Been Born a Kosher Chicken	p. 218
The Disappeared	p. 231
Listening	p. 236
Contributors	p. 247
Permissions Acknowledgments	p. 253
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