Boston in the 1970s: Is There a Lesbian Community? And if There is, Who is in it?

This excerpt from Amy Hoffman’s memoir, An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News (University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), describes some of the alternative community institutions serving lesbian feminists in Boston in the late 1970s. Hoffman, in her twenties at the time and fairly newly out, is an enthusiastic patron of these institutions. However, after a while, she begins to wonder about them. Boston in the 1970s was racially segregated and tense; a judicial order to desegregate the schools led to racist riots. The women’s community was, sadly, no more diverse than the city’s neighborhoods, and the alternative institutions, Hoffman realizes, are organized by and cater mostly to young, white, middle-class women like her. They fail to appeal to the needs and interests of poor women of color—although of course some do participate, and others become active in service organizations such as battered women’s shelters.