Barbara Love
Barbara Love, also known as Barbara J. Love, is an American feminist writer and the editor of Feminists who Changed America, 1963-1975. The Veteran Feminists of America said of Love, "If Second Wave activists were graded according to their contributions, Barbara Love would be in the top ten."
Love is a lesbian activist, writer and editor. With the National Organization for Women, Love organized and participated in demonstrations, such as the demonstration against The New York Times which resulted in the integration of the which helped support improvements towards equal pay for equal work. She also worked within the organization to improve the acceptance of lesbian feminists within the organization. She helped to found consciousness-raising groups for lesbian feminists and was active in the gay liberation movement. Her mother supported her at gay rights and gay pride marches.
With her lover and fellow feminist, Sidney Abbott, she co-authored the classic book Sappho Was a Right-on Woman: A Liberated View of Lesbianism, which she hoped would lead to greater awareness of society’s oppression of women and lesbians. She helped in the presentation to the American Psychiatric Association which led to the removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Early life
Barbara J. Love was born in 1937 and grew up in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Her Danish father was a hosiery manufacturer. The king of Denmark decorated him for his role during the war as an underground agent. He also worked for Radio Free Europe. Her mother, Lois Love, whose ancestors were from colonial Massachusetts, was involved in community activities. Love had two brothers.At 12 years of age as a competitive swimmer, she was the first person in New Jersey to break the record of the 100 yard freestyle in under a minute.
Love had several potential areas of contention with her parents as a Democratic lesbian feminist. The most significant concern of her "far right" Republican parents was that she was a Democrat. She became isolated from the rest of the family because she had friends who were not Protestants or Country Club members and many that were poor. She also "wondered why women had to be in the kitchen while men were in the living room discussing things of world import."
She began having crushes on girls in middle school, but didn't realize she was a lesbian and didn't have anyone to talk to about her feelings. In 1968 she told her mother she was gay. Her mother's response was "First to thine own self be true". Lois Love supported her daughter in gay rights and pride marches and in the founding of the now national Parents of Gays.
Education
Love studied journalism and graduated in 1959 from Syracuse University. During her time there she found that gays could be thrown out of college for their sexuality and that their lives were "sad and often perilous."Adulthood
After graduation, she taught at an American school in Italy. In 1961, she returned to the United States, and being before the gay movement, gays could be arrested "for whatever reason." She did not enjoy going to gay bars.Women's movement
Love became involved in the women's movement and the National Organization for Women when there was a small New York chapter and national board. She learned about it while interviewing Long John Nebel, meeting with a NOW founder, Muriel Fox, and talking to the Long Island Press journalist Dolores Alexander who had interviewed Betty Friedan. She was invited to a meeting of the chapter's board of directors at Friedan's apartment in the Dakota Building. Aside from Friedan, who she found "harsh and demanding," other activists included Rita Mae Brown and Kate Millett. Barbara helped to organize some of the group's demonstrations and participated in the demonstration against The New York Times, Colgate-Palmolive, and men-only restaurants and hotels. The demonstration against The New York Times called for integration of for men and women. At that time there was a 25% discount for jobs filled by women, which is an equal pay for equal work issue.Friedan, reflecting the tenor of some other heterosexual members of NOW, stated initially that the presence of lesbians in the organization was damaging to their image. Barbara Love's public response was: "My life had gotten better since I’d joined NOW and even better when I joined the women forging the beginnings of lesbian liberation," which reflected her intention to have lesbianism accepted as a feminist issue within NOW.
She developed the Foremost Women in Communications by compiling the information, editing it, and having it published. She began the work in 1970 having realized the need to create a resource of the women's accomplishments and ability in the communication field.
Lesbian feminist
Feeling unaccepted by the gay and women's movements, Love and other lesbian feminists formed consciousness raising groups and encouraged other lesbians to join. Another coordinator was Sidney Abbott, who became Love'slover and co-author. In the 1970s they were fellow members of Radicalesbians. With Elizabeth Shankin, Love founded the Matriarchists, a radical feminist group. It hosted conferences, held consciousness-raising sessions, wrote position papers, and in the early 1970s published a newspaper entitled Matriarchists.
While Kate Millett was speaking about sexual liberation at Columbia University in 1970, a woman in the audience asked her, "Why don't you say you're a lesbian, here, openly. You've said you were a lesbian in the past." Millett hesitantly responded, "Yes, I am a lesbian". A couple of weeks later, Time December 8, 1970 article "Women's Lib: A Second Look" reported that Millett admitted she was bisexual, which it said would likely discredit her as a spokesperson for the feminist movement because it "reinforce the views of those skeptics who routinely dismiss all liberationists as lesbians." In response, two days later a press conference was organized by Love and Ivy Bottini in Greenwich Village which led to a statement in the name of 30 lesbian and feminist leaders which declared their "solidarity with the struggle of homosexuals to attain their liberation in a sexist society".
Love made an appearance on The Phil Donahue Show in 1970 and on PBS' David Susskind Show in 1971, along with six other lesbians, including Lilli Vincenz and Barbara Gittings. They were among the first open lesbians to appear on television in the US, and debated long-held stereotypes about gays with Susskind. A week after her appearance on the David Susskind Show, a middle-aged couple approached Gittings in the supermarket to claim, "You made me realize that you gay people love each other just the way Arnold and I do."
In their essay Is Women's Liberation a Lesbian Plot published in the book Women in a Sexist Society, Sydney Abbott and Love gave their opinion about lesbians’ role in the women's liberation movement:
Regarding the way in which lesbians represented the ultimate liberated women, Love said in 1972:
That year, at a national NOW conference in California, Arlie Scott led an effort that resulted in NOW passing a resolution asserting that lesbianism is a feminist issue. Friedan endorsed the lesbian rights resolution at the International Women's Year conference in Houston in 1976.
Abbott and Love left Radicalesbians and formed 26 consciousness-raising groups in the late 1970s. Sidney Abbott, Kate Millett, Phyllis Birkby, Alma Routsong, and Artemis March were among the members of CR One, the first lesbian-feminist consciousness-raising group.
Psychiatric diagnosis
There used to be a record in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders for homosexuality. Barbara Gittings, Love, and other lesbian and gay people made a presentation in 1971 to the American Psychiatric Association that influenced the December 15, 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from the DSM. Two diagnosis remained "ego-dystonic homosexuality" and "sexual disturbance disorder".Parents of Gays
Sidney Abbott and Love were among the first feminists to join the gay liberation movement.Love, Morty Manford, Jeanne Manford and Love's mother founded the Parents of Gays, now the national PFLAG National organization. Love also co-founded a free walk-in center for gays, Identity House.
''Sappho Was a Right-on Woman''
Her work as a writer continued; In 1971 she co-authored the first nonfiction book about lesbianism from a positive perspective, Sappho Was a Right-on Woman, with Sidney Abbott. It was also the first to discuss the connection between feminism and lesbianism. They wrote that a goal of the book was that lesbians could live their lives "unconsciously", without the societal stigma placed upon them because of their gender or sexuality. To be "the most ordinary people" required awareness created through the gay liberation and women's liberation movements that would lead to elimination of oppressive behaviors and practices.Another "classic that should not be overlooked" about lesbianism is Phyllis Lyon's Lesbian/Woman.
''Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975''
In 1996 she began a project to write biographies of 2,200 second-wave feminists and record the important events from that period, which was published in the book Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975. She was assisted by Veteran Feminists of America members. Her book has been the subject of discussion or conferences at VFA and NOW events.In an interview about the book Barbara Love said:
For living "changemakers", information was gathered via questionnaires and other sources of information. In addition to research, people close to deceased activists were interviewed for information gathering. The book focuses on the contributions of individuals, rather than organizations. Information about each feminists is archived at Smith College's Sophia Smith Collection.