Lesbian Passion: Loving Ourselves And Each Other by JoAnn Loulan

Lesbian Passion: Loving Ourselves And Each Other Reviews

• 
  Freyja Vanadis

  I read this when I first bought it in about 1994. I can't force myself to read it again, even though I'm in the process of reading my entire gay and lesbian library this year and last.
• 
  Jillian

  Lesbian Passion: Loving Ourselves and Each Other is an interesting and at times very warm thrift store find. Some of it is really striking to read still, even thirty-five years later. I feel seen and understood and spoken to as a lesbian when I read "Lesbian Self Esteem" and "The Lesbian Date," feel a connection with these women so far in the past through our joys and struggles. The chapters about having more fun having sex are still refreshing in their earnestness, playfulness, and embrace of female and lesbian pleasure, no matter how much we like to think we've advanced societal attitudes toward sexuality.
  
  The book, perhaps unintentionally, also provides a snapshot of lesbian culture in 1987 that I find both fascinating and precious. We have so little of our own history within easy reach. Loulan mentions at times at how things have changed in the past decade or so at her point in time, how the lesbian separatist movement has since passed, or how the "coalition politics of the eighties" have replaced the "lesbian politically correct police" of fifteen years prior that might object to her admitting we have a mix of feminine and masculine inside of us. Some of her text hints at the then-shifting lines of "lesbian" from what someone does to who someone is, from "woman who eats pussy" to "woman exclusively attracted to women," with the rise of identity politics and the apparently then-controversial bisexual label, at the ongoing community debates of the ethics of sadomasochism in any form, or if penetration is "heterosexual." More generally, it's also speckled with the humor of the community at that time, and reflects how intertwined with second-wave feminism lesbian culture was at the time in both its focus on general women's issues and its format (the essays appear to be edited from lectures Loulan gave).
  
  The most affecting look at history, however, is "What Do Lesbians Need to Know About AIDS?" The third paragraph sucked the air out of my chest:
  
  

  "Read this chapter with a loving light around you. Make sure you keep breathing, and call a friend if you are scared. Call one of the resources listed at the end of this chapter if you need more information. It is so painful to learn about a disease that has unleashed so many emotions, so much fear and sorrow. We need to engage our minds, however, as well as our hearts." (pg. 120)

  
  
  So little is known about HIV in the time this book sits within. "AIDS has only been studied since 1981." Only six years. Only recently has research "suggested" blood contact may not be necessary for transmission, and for now it shows that HIV "probably" -- only probably -- can't be transmitted through tears or saliva. There's a whole page on the importance of getting tested as anonymously as possible because of the immense discrimination HIV-positive people face and the pushes to legislatively worsen this discrimination.
  
  The fear and weight of the AIDS crisis is heavy here. I was struck, as I often am reading about the era, with immense grief, but also a sense of responsibility to never forget what our elders went through, and of gratitude that it is immortalized here. It is painful but important.