The Power And The Pride

The '80s brought the devastation of AIDS, and with it a partial healing of an old rift between male and female homosexuals. For many lesbians, the bottom line about gays has always been that they are men, and often sexist to boot." Straight men at least have an incentive to pretend they respect women," jokes Hillary Rosen, vice president of the Recording Industry of America and a member of the board of directors of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, a lobbying group. Yet many gay men now recognize the debt they owe lesbians, who embraced At a the cause of AIDS as their own. Lesbians, many of whom belonged to such "caring" professions as nursing and social work, helped start health-care networks. They lobbied for policy change and protested when it didn't happen fast enough. "AIDS did knit us into family," says Vaid. "Before, we existed in parallel worlds."

New fissures, however, have begun to show. While few lesbians would argue that it was wrong to rally round the AIDS fight, there have been rumblings about the need to refocus their energies. Lesbians consider themselves victims of both homophobia and sexism. Some issues now on the table, like the military ban, speak to the homosexuality of lesbians. Others are women's issues, such as pay equity, day care and the ERA. Some overlap, becoming in the process uniquely theirs. "Take reproductive freedom," says New York state legislator Deborah Glick, a lesbian. "It brings up areas of family law that haven't been dealt with, like artificial insemination." Lesbians have also begun demanding more money for research on breast cancer-a worry for all women but, because of its increased risk with childlessness, a particular concern among homosexuals.

But questions about how to reach their goals, and who will lead, continue to bedevil lesbian activists. Like the gay-rights movement generally, the lesbian ranks embody people of different colors, class, education and culture; their issues aren't always the same. Should lesbians pour money into mainstream lobbying groups, or take to the streets with the Lesbian Avengers, a protest outfit formed to attract media attention to lesbian causes? And what about those men, who still dominate gay leadership positions? "When a lesbian walks into a room of gay men, it's the same as when she walks into a room of heterosexual men," says one activist. "You're listened to and then politely ignored."That, politically active lesbians agree, is one thing that must change. "We're not going to be invisible anymore," says Lesbian Avenger Ann Northrop. "We are going to be prominent and have power and be part of all decision making."

YOUTHQUAKE: Coming of age sexually is always a rocky rite of passage; for homosexuals, even more so. But young lesbians seem less and less conflicted about their identity. Girls who "are growing up lesbian today," says Carton, 35, of GLAAD, "watch 'Roseanne,' and they see a main character played by Sandra Bernhard, who's a lesbian, and it's accepted on the show. That's the difference FEMME Traditionally, the between me growing up in the '60s and seeing 'The Children's Hour' with Shirley MacLaine. She finds out she's a lesbian and she kills herself." Growing up in a small, Southern town, Ashley Herrin (who appears on NEWSWEEK's cover with her partner Catherine Angiel) turned to alcohol to deaden her feelings of sexual differentness. Today she's sober and is studying to become a therapist for homosexuals. Not all young lesbians believe they can tell their parents about their sexual orientation even now, but pioneers from the feminist trenches detect a refreshing SEX-POSITIVE Flaunts new sense of self-acceptance. "When I was 21, I was terrified," says Dorothy Allison, lesbian author of the best-selling novel "Bastard Out of Carolina." "These young lesbians aren't seared in the same way. They're living their lives instead of explaining their lives."

On a few campuses around the country, straights have found themselves on the defensive. "Once in a while you'll hear a first-year student slightly upset about being called a breeder or something," says Robin Russell, a recent graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio, considered to be a gay mecca by many young homosexuals. The annual Lesbutante Ball is a command performance for lesbian couples in their hutch and femme finery. Earlier this year, at the University of Washington in Seattle, the student government sponsored its first Dyke Visibility Day. The catalogs of some 45 schools contain courses on the homosexual experience.

One common experience that doesn't appear in the course offerings is that of the "four-year lesbian." In today's politically correct atmosphere, say many students, it's become the in thing to experiment sexually. For some, that has meant lesbian relations. Feminist scholar Catharine Stimpson, dean of the graduate school at Rutgers University, says her students consider themselves to be a bisexual "Third Wave." "They're quite condescending about dividing humanity into heterosexual and homosexual," says Stimpson. The "LUG," or "lesbian until graduation" phenomenon, however, has alienated many people-not only straight alumni but lesbians, who suggest that it trivializes their long and difficult journey. "It's funny," says black lesbian author Jacqueline Woodson, 30. "When you go to college, you date all these baby dykes. Then you graduate, and you're still a lesbian, but they've gotten married and secure."