lesbianartandartists:

New York Magazine (May 10, 1993) and Newsweek (June 21, 1993)

Like all other individuals and self-consciously designated “groups” of individuals, lesbians have a history; and it is from history that people construct an awareness not only of who they are, but also of what they want and need from their environment. Situating lesbians as an ahistorical or de-historical group plays an important role in our political subjugation: today’s “lesbian chic” is consistently careful not to present lesbian history. The deliberate erasure of lesbian history from most social, political, artistic and personal records encourages lesbians to consider ourselves excluded from the past, and consequently makes us more willing to accept exclusion from the social and political life of the present. This general elimination of lesbians from popular and academic considerations of what constitutes “the past” also allows non-lesbians to feel justified in continuing to deny the existence of both lesbian lives and lesbian culture.

Laura Cottingham, Lesbians are so chic…that we are not really lesbians at all (London: Cassell, 1996), 11.