Daughters of Bilitis
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The Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) was formed in San Francisco, California in 1955 by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon along with six other women. The author Marion Zimmer Bradley was a member of the group in the 1950s. It was conceived as an explicitly lesbian alternative to other homophile groups of that era such as the Mattachine Society.
"Daughters" was meant to evoke association with other American sororal associations such as the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. "Bilitis" is the name given to a lesbian contemporary of Sappho, by the French poet Pierre Lou˙s in his 1894 work The Songs of Bilitis.
The regular DOB publication was called The Ladder, started in 1956 with the help of ONE, Inc. and the Mattachine Society, with whom the DOB retained friendly relations. In 1970 the mailing-lists and production facilities for The Ladder were secretly seized and relocated by separatist feminists, and as a consequence the magazine ceased publication in 1972. The name of the journal refers to Plato's pedagogic hierarchy, "the ladder of beauty".
DOB was influential throughout the 1950s and 1960s but was torn apart by factionalism in the 1970s. Its members split over whether to give more support to the gay rights movement or to feminism. One chapter of DOB survives to this day in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
External links
- A short article on DOB (http://www.rowfant.demon.co.uk/bilititisdof.htm)
- The Songs of Bilitis (http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/sob/)