Where the girls were: The geographies of lesbian experience in Washington, D.C. during the late 1960s and 1970s

This dissertation traces the geographies of lesbian experience in Washington, D.C. in the late 1960s and 1970s, an era of dramatic change in the lives of lesbians in the capital and across the country. In particular, I focus on the material and ideological expressions of local lesbian communities through examining tensions between public and private spaces as well as by exploring the production of safe and unsafe spaces. I tie these geographies to individual and collective action by analyzing how access to and experiences of space contributed to women's ability to construct and contest lesbian geographies. I argue that lesbians were able to create safe space in the District through two mechanisms. Women could create claims to privacy that allowed them to express lesbian desire and identity shielded from unwanted surveillance. Women also could contest the heterosexual and patriarchal nature of public space. Through using both of these methods, women were able to carve relatively safe lesbian geographies out of an otherwise repressive landscape. However, women's ability and access to resources to engage in these processes of constructing safe spaces were unevenly distributed. Accordingly, this study also contributes to a more nuanced understanding of recent history in the nation's capital by exploring how sexuality and gender articulated with race, class, and other factors in the development of urban lesbian geographies.