“Your Name is Safe”: The Ladder as lesbian literary community
This article is adapted from a presentation given at BAAS Postgraduate Symposium, 4th December 2021. In the second issue of the Ladder – the San Francisco-based lesbian literary magazine that circulated between 1956 and 1972 – Ann Ferguson published an article intended to reassure nervous subscribers, titled ‘Your Name is Safe.’ Ferguson acknowledged readers’ fears that “names on our mailing list may fall into the wrong hands.”[1] This was a euphemistic reference to the FBI, and lesbian subscribers had reason to be cautious. The first issue of the Ladder appeared three years after Dwight D. Eisenhower barred queer workers from federal employment, initiating a nationwide anti-gay witch hunt known as the Lavender Scare. Members of the Ladder’s parent organisation, the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) had been under state surveillance since DOB’s founding in 1955. Accessing their FBI files in 1981, DOB founders Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were surprised to […]