The OLOHP
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  • Insider Issue 48 all four pages
  • A Few Profiles
  • Home
    • About
    • Get Involved
    • What and How
    • About Interviews
    • About Support Documents
    • Archives
    • FAQs
  • Excerpts
    • Quotes >
      • Awakenings
      • Only Ones/Finding Others
      • Language
      • Closet and Coming Out
      • Military
      • Religion
      • This and That
      • Info and resources
      • Marriage and Kids
      • Seeking Help
      • On Loss
    • Voices
    • Profiles >
      • Annalee Stewart
      • Beverly Hickock
      • Jean Mountaingrove
      • Ocie Perry
      • Ruth Silver
      • Ethyl Bronson
      • Marie Mariano
      • Vera Martin
      • Betty Shoemaker
  • Products
    • Newsletter
    • Our Books
    • DVD Our Stories
    • Order
  • Contact
  • A Three Way Ask
  • What OLOHP Women Are Up To
    • Laura Bock
    • Gaye Adegbalola
    • Kathy Prezbindowski
    • Ann Bannon
    • Tret Fure
    • Ruth Debra
    • Lillian Faderman
    • JS&C&M&M
  • Insider Issue 48 all four pages
  • A Few Profiles

Quotes on language used

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Jennie, born 1927
I grew up with the queer thing. It wasn't like we use the word queer now, it's become a good term, and it wasn't then. Lesbian was a word we knew of, but we didn't normally use.…  I'd take the bus home, get out of my girl clothes, get into my boy clothes, get into my car and hurry back to make the bar scene. During my high school years, I was trying to be so butch. I really wanted to go into the Army but my mother wouldn't let me. My mother said, "Nothing but queers and whores in the Army."



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Janice, born 1940

I usually use lesbian nowadays. That’s what I hear most. At first it was hard. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like to say it, I didn’t like to use it, and I didn’t. But it’s gotten so common, it works all right. Well, when I first identified as interested in females, there wasn’t a word. The only word that I knew was “queer.”



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Annalee, born 1927

There was no vocabulary and I knew no one else ... there was nothing. It's not like today where you have "gay" and "lesbian" in the paper, news, phone books and all kinds of places where you can find somebody, although I think it's more difficult in the rural area. But there was none of that and I didn't know anything until I finally got into college, where I picked up the word "homosexual."



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Ellie, born 1917
Dorm life was where I had a first experience with other women, what we would now call lesbians. And that was a very light relationship, really, nothing heavy or steady. A lesson or two, when you would visit in Philadelphia with somebody’s friend, or something of that sort, but no exposure, actually, to the lesbian and gay thing. This was the 1930s, pre-WW II and the word ‘lesbian’ was never used.



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Dorothy
, born 1917
We had fun together, but there was no talking about it, let alone even knowing that there was such a word as lesbian. Well, I knew there was such a word. I had heard about it from time to time when I'd been a child. Lesbian was a bad word.



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Note sent to the OLOHP: What you have done is so important that I think even you don’t understand it. This will have a life of its own and be around way after we are gone. To have thought this up, seen the need, and assumed the effort to get it done is phenomenal. I really do salute you.
TF says: The women that the OLOHP has brought to us have lived remarkable lives, often solitary and private, and we are far richer for knowing these women, their struggles and their passion.
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