ABSTRACT
In the Spring of 1978, at a meeting of the Midwestern Division of the Society for Women in Philosophy, Sarah Hoagland read a paper entitled "Lesbian Epistemology," in which she sketched the following picture. In the conceptual schemes of phallocracies there is no category of woman-identified-woman, woman-loving-woman or woman-centered-woman; that is, there is no such thing as a lesbian. Hoagland was urging lesbian-feminists to begin this work, and she did not try to say in advance what could be seen from that exceptional epistemic position. Another way of beginning is suggested by the observation that women of all stripes and colors, including lesbians but also including nonlesbians, suffer erasure. A recent edition of Webster's Collegiate Dictionary tells us that a lesbian is a woman who has sex, or sexual relations, with other women. When the dictionary defines lesbians as women who have sex or sexual relations with other women, it defines lesbians as logically impossible.
