Sappho Was a Right-On Woman by Sidney Abbott & Barbara Love (All Editions)

Sappho Was a Right-On Woman: A Liberated View of Lesbianism by Sidney Abbott and Barbara Love is a two-part study of lesbianism written from the inside. The first part examines how lesbians navigate a society that disapproves of their existence — the techniques of passing, the costs of concealment, and the pressures of living at odds with dominant culture. The second part turns outward, looking at lesbians who chose to live openly and work to change the conditions that oppressed them. It was, as the authors noted, the first book-length account of lesbianism written by lesbians about themselves.

Genre: Autobiography/Biography, Grier Rated, Lesbian Studies

Subjects: Lesbianism; Social Science / Lesbian Studies; Social Science / Sociology / General

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Comments

Published in 1972, Sappho Was a Right-On Woman arrived at a genuinely consequential moment. The women’s liberation movement was in full force, gay liberation had been galvanized by Stonewall three years earlier, and lesbians were navigating an uncomfortable position inside both movements — often invisible in the gay rights conversation and actively marginalized within mainstream feminism. Abbott and Love wrote directly into that tension, making the case that lesbianism was not a pathology to be explained or a problem to be managed, but a political and personal identity to be understood on its own terms.

Its significance lies partly in what it was not: it was not written by a clinician, a sociologist, or a male observer. Before this book, almost everything published about lesbianism had been authored by people outside the experience. Abbott and Love changed that, and the book’s reception — reviewed seriously, reprinted multiple times, rated Great on this site — reflects how hungry readers were for exactly this kind of witness. It remains a primary document of early 1970s lesbian feminism and an important artifact of the period when lesbians first began writing their own history in sustained, book-length form.

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