Letters Between Barbara Grier and Liza Cowan
Well Dressed Dyke...Liza Cowan interveiw

Review of DYKE, A Quarterly in Autostraddle. September 2012

Autostraddle, the website of "news, entertainment, opinion and girl-on-girl culture" posted an article on historic Lesbian Magazines as part of their ongoing series, The Way We Were. The article is titled Our Legacy: Six Lesbian Magazines from The Then Before Now. DYKE A Quarterly was among the six, and we are honored to be in the company of Vice Versa (June 1947-February 1948),  The Ladder, (1956-1972),  The Furies (1972-1973), Azelia: A Magazine by Third World Lesbians (1977-1983), and Hot Wire

 

See the Autostraddle article HERE

Here's what they said about DYKE:

 

"In 1975, Liza Cowan and Penny House -- best friends since the age of four -- launched DYKE magazine. They were in their mid-twenties, living in New York, and wanted to be part of the burgeoning cultural conversation around lesbianism, and lesbian separatism in particular. Most lesbian separatists believed that the best way to live was completely without men altogether, and that women should band together and form their own self-nurturing communities free of ties to the patriarchal world. If you hate men, like me and Julie Goldman, then you probably think this is a pretty bang-up idea. Of course, it was more functional in theory than in practice and certain elements of the philosophy would be considered highly problematic — and often transphobic, racist or elitist — today.

The magazine made it through six issues before having to close, and now Liza and Penny have posted a great deal of DYKE's archives online. Material included articles on "theoretical politics, live events, place, current and past history, media, fashions, music, home economics, literature, animal lore, health, applied sciences and gossip."  Basically, it's like an amazing lesbian tumblr + livejournal, but in print and for the 70's — which is why it's so fascinating. The writing in DYKE is relatively personal and the writers are relatively inexperienced (their only "big name" is Alix Dobkin). You won't find polemics from Audre Lourde or Adrienne Rich in DYKE, but you'll find the closest thing you can to reading the diary of, basically, middle-class white lesbian separatists in the mid-70's — complete with the angry lesbian commenters!"

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