The Lesbian Herstory Archives was a place that collected anything lesbian from anywhere in the world. They admitted that their mandate was a little broad and after a few years of collecting they have become overloaded with artefacts and books from floor to ceiling but continue to collect anyways. The need for lesbian culture to have a space for its history became apparent to me after seeing the past culture that has already disappeared and has held hardly any space within history, in a shadow behind gay culture.
Their purpose was to begin to collect and hold a reference for Lesbian culture which was something that was being left out of collections of public libraries and museums. Their collections have served as archives of magazines and queer oriented books but have also served to save journals and personal belongings of Lesbians’ estate that is threatened by their heteronormative (and homophobic) families. This space is the first I have seen dedicated to gay culture as well as female culture, an opportunity to accept lesbian history rather than gay history.
The gender of the space was definitely feminine, with an all female staff and a feminine aesthetic with lace curtains and a purple/pink interior. The content itself didn’t appear feminine; it reminded me of the packed shelves at the NYPL yet upon closer inspection the content was extremely sexual, from academic sexual study, to lesbian fiction to romance novels. Yet the space didn’t feel sexual at all with a tame elderly lesbian couple and one young Masters of Library Studies intern amidst an organized heap of literature.
There was reference to heterosexuals and gay men in the room as well; they were incidentally present in books with lesbian content as well. Their presence in the space reminded me of queer content in a heterosexual space, or lesbian content in a homosexual space, almost non existent but inadvertently present. The space was dominantly female and while it didn’t exclude men from its ranks, I could see them being discouraged from participating with the Archives because of the interior decorating and dominantly female subject matter.
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