'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. Through its leaders, magazine, and network of local chapters, DOB played a crucial role in creating lesbian identity, visibility, and political strategies in Cold War America. Marcia Gallo has interviewed dozens of former DOB members, many of whom have never spoken on record. The small social group evolved over the next two decades into a national organization that counted more than a dozen chapters, and laid the foundation for today’s lesbian rights movement.ĭifferent Daughters chronicles this movement and the women who fought the church and state in order to change not only our nation’s perception of homosexuality, but how lesbians see themselves. It was against this political backdrop that a circle of San Francisco lesbians formed a private club where lesbians could meet others in a safe, affirming setting. Like its predominantly gay male counterpart, the Mattachine Society, DOB was launched in response to the oppressive anti-homosexual climate of the McCarthy era, when lesbian and gay people were arrested, fired from jobs, and had their children taken away simply because of their sexual orientation.

She also served as Director of Development and Donor Relations with the Funding Exchange, a network of progressive community-based foundations headquartered in New York.Nearly fifteen years before the birth of gay liberation, the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) was the world’s first organization committed to lesbian visibility and empowerment. She is now working on a book about Catherine “Kitty” Genovese, who was murdered in Queens, New York in 1964 and became an international symbol of urban apathy, the “bystander syndrome,” and the failure of community.Ī native of Wilmington, Delaware, Gallo was Field Director for the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco before entering academia. In 2007, Gallo received the Passing the Torch Award from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY for her scholarship on feminist and lesbian activism.

Her book, Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement, won the 2006 Lambda Literary Award for Nonfiction and was named one of the best books of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle. She received her PhD in history with specialization in gender and sexuality from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 2004. Gallo is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Different Daughters by Marcia M. Gallo