Awfully Devoted Women: Lesbian Lives in Canada by Cameron Duder - Book Report/Review Example

Awfully Devoted Women: Lesbian Lives in Canada by Cameron Duder Introduction Awfully Devoted Women: Lesbian Lives in Canada, 1900-65 is a book by Cameron Duder which was released by UBC Press on April 14th, 2010. In the book, Cameron devotes eight chapters to the exploration and explanation of bisexual and lesbian women’s subjectivity to in English-speaking Canada, prior to the advent of the second-wave feminism. The book provides an interesting and critical arena for reading, given that before the 1970s there was scantiness of details concerning lesbians before the advent of the Canadian second-wave feminism. As a matter of fact, Cameron recounts how the Canadian socio-cultural mainstream started smarting up to the reality of homosexual relations and activities. Thus, through Cameron’s input, a scholarly material is presented for historians, sociologists and other social scientists can draw upon. Thus, the importance of the book is that it helps fill the gap between 1993 when manifestations of homosexual relations began to become perceptible in Canada, and the fact that lesbian and female bisexual relations predated 1993. To add some twist to the paradox above, Cameron explains that the lives of lesbians in the Canadian setting before 1965 had been enshrouded in secrecy and mystery. To show that this kind of lifestyle existed, Cameron points out that historians have shed light on the secret lives of the upper-middle class romantic friends and the working class butch women who regularly visited bars in the Cold War era. The same historians have also been able to reconstruct information which show that the lower-middle class women kept their sexual identity by hiding their sexual relationships and maintaining discreet social relations. In a show of her dexterity in logical consistency, Cameron refers to materials that underscore the reality of female homosexuality and how it was suppressed by the society before 1970s. For instance, Cameron makes reference of Bud Williams’ correspondence with her lover Frieda Fraser. In the letter, Bud mentions her thrilling desire to romantically engage Frieda publicly- a desire that she cannot fulfill because of the fear of a public backlash. This letter dates back to 1926. Cameron also discusses how an array of letters and articles was released prolifically to discount lesbian and female bisexual relations in the 1920s and 1930s. Because of this, the need for women to keep these relations discreet and covert was paramount. Cameron’s standpoint is confirmed by the contents in Bud’s letter which acknowledged the sufferings that accosted lesbianism and female bisexuality. The crux of the matter herein is that literature and persecution of lesbians and female bisexuals underscore the presence of lesbianism and female bisexuality. Cameron also tables results of interviews which she had conducted 70 years ago, to bring out Canada’s attitude towards lesbianism and female bisexuality between the 1940s and 1960s. It is apparent that so intense was the persecution and discrimination against this lifestyle that two (Mary and Doris) interviewees thought that they were the only lesbian couple in Cape Cod because lesbians and female bisexuals had been forced into hiding. Cameron also points out that it is until the concept of visibility began to be propounded by the gay rights movement that lesbianism and feminism began to come out of their cocoons. The courage of the gay rights movement between 1900 and 1965 had been steeled by the bar culture. It is from this juncture that the gay rights movement started to challenge adherence to invisibility and to aggressively seek public awareness and acceptance. It is against this backdrop that Canadian films such as Forbidden Love and other literary pieces such as Faderman Lillian’s Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers and Madeline Davis’ Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold emerged in the 1950s and 1960s to depict the goings on in homosexual lives. In the second chapter, Cameron enters the crevices of the lesbian and female bisexual lives to determine how women desiring other women identified each other during the periods of repression. Cameron divulges that apart from signs (aspects of appearance) that these women used, there were also linguistic clues that were used for this purpose. Institutions such as schools, universities and working environments are seen as a central pool from which lesbians identified each other. Cameron sees bisexuality as an instrument that was used to cover homosexual inclinations. Cameron particularly explains that it became very possible to find devoted lesbians without necessarily going outside the heteronormative behavior. Thus, one would appear normal to the society, as far as sexual orientation is concerned. In the third chapter, Cameron deals with the pseudo philosophical aspect of lesbianism. The discussion herein is if a woman is considered a lesbian because she has engaged in an intimate physical interaction with another woman, or there are other constructs that should be used to judge a woman as one or not. To this effect, Cameron states that intimate physical engagement should not be taken as the yardstick for determining lesbian or non-lesbian identity. The dearth in historical literature would mean that there was no lesbianism in history, if identity should be premised on physical engagement- and this interpretation is wrong. Cameron sums up the problem of lesbian identity as transcending the physical. Particularly, Cameron describes a lesbian as someone a woman whose primary emotional compositions and domestic relations were with women and their devotion to women transcended the normal structures of female relations. In the fourth chapter, Cameron attempts to reconstruct the relationship between the environment and lesbian orientation. This, Cameron tries to establishing by studying the relationship between lesbianism and childhood experiences of interviewees. Cameron seems to discount the idea of lesbianism being propelled by upbringing and childhood experience in saying that most of the women who shifted to lesbian lifestyles in the 1960s had been brought up under traditional homes which emphasized inadvertently or directly, heterosexuality. In the fifth chapter, the narrators recount the nature and extent of information which they had as children and as young adults, concerning sexuality and homosexuality. An overwhelming majority recounts that they were given very threadbare information on the mechanics of sex and homosexuality. All the narrators had grown up between the 1930s and 1950s. They all recount how, despite the wide pool of knowledge that existed then, they were told very little, if at all, in the home and school settings. This state of affairs left the narrators extrapolated information on the same, from snippets from the media, peers and a few family members. As for the sixth chapter, Cameron the specific sexual practices that take place in lesbianism. Although Cameron says hurriedly that the Cold War era saw the expansion of discussions on aspects of sexuality, yet Canadians had inadequate information on sexuality. Information of this kind was both not universal and quickly stigmatized as pathological. Information that made it to the tabloids was sensational speculations of the lurid details on homosexuality. Nevertheless, this period is important in setting the departure from the period before 1960s in the sense that it women living in it were more conscious about matters of sexuality than their counterparts in the previous generations. The two final chapters examine two salient aspects of lesbian life in the postwar decades: the community and relationships. In the penultimate chapter, the author examines the nature of lesbian relations and the setbacks that adherents of this lifestyle encounter. Women’s delight in fulfilling relationships, the right partners and in their sexual exploits are recounted, but they are also seen as being beset by an array of setbacks such as alcoholism, domestic violence and infidelity. The insinuation herein is that the very external factors that negatively or positively characterize heterosexual relations are also applicable in homosexual relations. Cameron goes ahead to analyze the relationship between lesbians and their families of origin to show the immense extent of suffering that they go through, including being disowned by their very families of origin. In the eighth chapter, Cameron discusses the social life as led by lesbians. Cameron through the help of the narrators shows that in Canada, in the 1960s, the social world of the lower-middle class lesbians was more private, just as their counterparts who occupied more respectable or more lucrative jobs in Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto and America. This does not only mean that lesbian and female bisexuals did not only prefer to socialize away from the view of the public but must have encountered similar problems of public and police harassment. Nevertheless, it is at this juncture that the lesbian community in Canada began to form occupational and social networks to start consciously propagating same-sex agenda in the 1950s and 1960s. It is at this instance that visible relationships between women began to manifest gradually and strongly as these women started claiming their space in the society. Personal Opinion Cameron indeed makes an insightful and piercing analysis in the life and times of the pre-1965 Canadian sexuality. Cameron renders cogently, Canada as being sexually conservative, but only ostensibly and by the façade. This is seen in the fact that Cameron points how outwardly, Canada was homogeneity of heterosexual relations, while behind closed doors; there were diverse forms of non-conventional forms of sexual orientation such as lesbianism and female bisexuality and gay lifestyles. Nevertheless, despite the stupendous work that Cameron has done, she dwells solely on the white population. At the same time, the research undertakings and interviews are mainly inclined towards white females in the working class and economically underpowered populations. Cameron makes up for this by explaining her inability to locate lesbians of color and aboriginal lesbians. The import of this failure is that it robs analysts of the chance to establish the prevalence of lesbianism across different races. Again, it is a fact that color (or race) underpinned social relations and social class, given that socioeconomic values were distributed along color lines. The gravity behind this affair is that it becomes difficult to determine how economic empowerment (or lack of it) either hindered or perpetuated lesbianism and female bisexuality and their acceptance in the society. It would have been useful to establish whether there is lucidity in the postulation that the upper class and the middle class are sexually more liberal than their counterparts from low-income earning families. In a closely related wavelength, the presence of the aborigines and the white population in the 20th century Canada means automatically, an ethno-cultural form of variegation in the society. This means that Canada at the point in time was a cultural melting pot, yet Cameron has skipped discussing how race-relations underpinned lesbian and female bisexual relations. At the same time, Cameron fails to capture the larger socio-economic and political developments that were taking in the larger environment. Cameron’s work particularly concentrates on two epochs which shaped socio-cultural and political developments- the Antebellum and the Cold War. Among many socio-cultural and economic ravages of World War I and II, it became apparent that sexuality underwent tremendous transformation. At the same time, social scientists such as English are categorical that the Cold War era is a watershed in understanding socio-cultural transformations that took place in Europe, the US, UK and the rest of the world. It would have been interesting to discuss if the Civil Rights Movements in the US and the mass rebellion against the US government’s involvement in the Vietnam War emboldened the visibility of the same rights movements that took place in Canada in the 1960s. It would have been captivating to discuss the possibility of these socio-cultural and economic transformations having played a role in the rise of lesbian and female bisexual lifestyles. Conversely, it could have equally paid if Cameron at least left vestiges for such discussions. The necessity of the concerns pointed above is that social change and cultural transformation do not happen in isolation. As technological advancements in IT, transport and gains in international relations help the world become closely-knit into a global village, social change becomes more dynamic (45, 6). The idea that lesbian and bisexual relationships and heterosexual relationships are comparable on the simple account that they are bedeviled by the same problems seems less plausible. It is obvious that the homosexual community has greater affinity to social problems such as divorce, exposure to HIV virus and drugs abuse. While many heterosexual marriages have successfully withstood the sweeping tempest of divorce, homosexual relationships (whether gay or lesbian) seldom go up to a decade. Perhaps it would have been better to qualify the intimation that heterosexual and lesbian relations are parallels. Recommendations and Conclusion In tracing the narrators’ childhood experience and interaction with the environment during childhood and young adulthood, Cameron communicates a painful but truthful finding that the narrators were scantily provided with information regarding sexuality. This serves as a clarion call for parents to take parenting seriously and as a platform for inculcating positive information on sexuality into the child. While educational curriculum is presently disseminating this useful information to children, it is totally imperative that parents stop relegating sex education to educational curriculum. It is only by parents taking this responsibility seriously that problems relating to sexuality such as rape, sexual harassment and the inappropriate sexual behavior can be effectively dealt with. Works Cited Duder, Cameron. Awfully Devoted Women: Lesbian Lives in Canada, 1900-65. New York: UBC Press, 2010. Print. English, Robert. “The Sociology of New Thinking: Elites, Identity, Change and the End of Cold War.” Journal of Cold War Studies, 7.2 (2005): 43-80. Print. Read More