It
wasn’t until Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin co-founded
the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955 that another lesbian publication
was launched. Martin
and Lyon both had backgrounds in journalism—they had both studied
journalism and worked as reporters—and they founded The
Ladder to provide a “feminine viewpoint” to counter the
predominantly masculine one in the other gay publications of
the time (ONE and
The Mattachine Review
were both focused on gay men).
In
the first issue, published in October 1956, Lyon
wrote, “It is to be hoped that our venture will encourage women
to take an ever-increasing part in the steadily-growing fight
for understanding of the homophile minority.”
Early
issues of The Ladder
published personal essays, fiction, editorials, reports of research
on homosexuality, lists of books and publications about homosexuality,
and letters to the editor. It
avoided publishing anything that was sexual in content, advocated
a relatively conservative tone—advising women to conform to
heterosexual fashion norms, for example—and soon began to publish
news about lesbians and the homophile movement.
It
took a leadership role in progressing
the issue of gay and lesbian rights in 1959, when San Francisco
Mayor George Christopher was accused of turning the city into
“the national headquarters for sex deviants,” and the Daughters
of Bilitis was singled out as a menace to young heterosexual
women.
In
reaction, Lyon and Martin published a special edition of The Ladder to counter these arguments with a reasoned analysis of
the situation that compelled the straight press to look more
closely into Mayor Christopher’s actions.
It
was discovered that his opponent had planted someone within
the local Mattachine Society to praise Mayor Christopher and
then leak the society’s supposed support for mayor to the public.
In the end, Mayor Christopher won re-election, and, as
Rodger Streitmatter noted in Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian
Press in America, “The
Ladder could rightly take credit for making homosexuality—for
the first time—a political issue” (page 48).
In
1963, as the lesbian and gay rights movement became
more militant—along with the rise of the feminist movement—Barbara
Gittings became the new editor of The
Ladder, and immediately took actions that adapted the previously
conservative magazine to the growing radicalism of the time.
In
1964 she added “A Lesbian Review” to the front cover of the
magazine, thereby proclaiming that the word “lesbian” was no
longer unspeakable, and declared that women could wear the pants
if they wanted to, abandoning the Daughters of Bilitis’s conservative
stance on butch fashions.
Gittings
and her partner, Kay Lahusen, who also acted as The Ladder’s assistant editor, replaced
the line drawings that had illustrated the front cover with
photos of actual lesbians. “It
definitely was a political statement,” she told Streitmatter.
“Every one of those women was saying, ‘We’re here, we’re
proud, and we’re beautiful!’” (page
55)
Much
more radical in her politics than Martin and Lyon, Gittings
wanted The Ladder
to advocate for gay rights, but after a series of disputes—including
an incident in which Gittings removed the statement “For Adults
Only” from the cover without consulting the Daughters of Bilitis—Gittings
was ousted from the magazine in 1966.
Martin took over temporarily until Barbara Grier became
the editor in 1968.
Initially
aiming to turn The Ladder
into a high-quality literary journal, Grier too developed political
differences with the founders, and after two short years she
and the magazine split off from the Daughters of Bilitis.
Grier took the mailing list and what submissions she
had from the magazine’s office and moved to Reno,
Nevada, where she removed
the word “lesbian” from the cover and, with its broader focus
on women’s issues and feminism, tripled the subscription rate.
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