What a Difference a Decade Makes

Coming to Power and the Second Coming

Bibliographic Data

ID3946546
AuthorsSue O''Sullivan, Sue O'Sullivan, Sue O’sullivan (corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume61
Issue1
Pages97-126
Publication date1999-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-7789 • E-ISSN: 1466-4380
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1080/014177899339324
OpenAlexW2067323980
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited2

A critical look at two books, Coming to Power - Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S/M, published in 1981, and its 'long awaited sequel', The Second Coming - A Leatherdyke Reader, published in 1996, yields many differences and similarities. Both books have been judged negatively or positively on the basis of their sadomasochistic content and in line with knee-jerk positions around the lesbian 'sex wars' of the 1980s. The feminist politics represented in each book and the connections to more general lesbian feminist concerns and developments of either the late 1970s (Coming to Power) or the late 1980s and early 1990s (The Second Coming) are often overlooked or dismissed. Comparing the kind of sex acts and personas fetishized in each book as well as the claims made for lesbian sm by its adherents often reveals more than the writers may have intended. A more nuanced reading of both books also reveals connections between lesbian feminism, particularly lesbian radical feminism and the sm dykes. Rather than being the 'illegitimate children' of lesbian feminism, as Coming to Power maintained in 1981, it is clear now that sm dykes and lesbian feminists are strange sisters who needed each other to define their particular politicized identities

Coming out · Feminism · Human sexuality · Lesbian · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Reading (process) · Sociology · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy

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