ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the development in the image of a lesbian community in the UK and the US from around 1970 to the end of the decade. Taking the Stonewall Riots of 1969 as the starting point of the modern lesbian and gay movement (see Chapter 1), it is shown how lesbian existence as a political category can be traced back to sources such as the New Left, second-wave feminism and gay liberation. The fi rst paradigmatic text chosen for analysis is the Radicalesbians’ 1970 manifesto ‘The Woman Identifi ed Woman.’ In the analysis, it is argued that its opening stretches can be read as a paradigmatic coming-out narrative that is related to genres such as the bildungsroman and the picaresque tale, especially in its use of the journey metaphor. This sees the paradigmatic lesbian transform from troubled individual in a hostile world to part of a benevolent community conceptualized in quasireligious terms. Here, the development of a lesbian feminist worldview can be, and has been, compared to a conversion experience (Wolf 1979, p. 67). The community-building nature of the text is further realized through attributive processes and positive evaluation of the emergent in-group.
