Her Neighbors Wife A History of Lesbian Desire Within Marriage (Politics and Culture in Modern America) - Lauren Jay Gutterman

Written by Lauren Jay Gutterman
Read by Sheree Galpert
Format: M4B
Unabridged

Through interviews, diaries, memoirs, and letters, Her Neighbor’s Wife traces the stories of hundreds of women who struggled to balance marriage and same-sex desire in the postwar United States.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, the lesbian feminist movement and the no-fault divorce revolution transformed the lives of wives who desired women. Women could now choose to divorce their husbands in order to lead openly lesbian or bisexual lives; increasingly, however, these women were confronted by hostile state discrimination, typically in legal battles over child custody. Well into the 1980s, many women remained ambivalent about divorce and resistant to labeling themselves as lesbian, therefore complicating a simple interpretation of their lives and relationship choices. By revealing the extent to which marriage has historically permitted space for wives’ relationships with other women, Her Neighbor’s Wife calls into question the presumed straightness of traditional American marriage.