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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 2d

Rejected everywhere, staged as a hoax, and finally published in a lesbian sex mag — Sarah Schulman’s “A Short Story About a Penis” has quite a history. Rachel Corbman uncovers its fascinating legacy in Signs’ new issue: check it out here! (sub. req’d):

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society | Vol 51, No 1

This introduction to “Lesbian Studies, Now” reflects on the affective, intellectual, and political stakes of invoking “lesbian” as a generative scholarly category in the present as well as the three…

buff.ly

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 5d

🚨🚨 My dear friend and fellow academic, the Palestinian American sociologist @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social has been taken by the Cook County Sheriff near Chicago. They have not mirandized her. Please signal boost. All eyes on Broadview for Eman and the community she was defending 🚨🚨

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rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · 5d

The lesbian studies issue of @signsjournal.org is on the internet! It includes my article about Sarah Schulman’s slideshow about a fake lesbian writer & her real short story about a lesbian who wakes up with a penis.

In March 1983, Sarah Schulman finished a draft of a short story about a lesbian who wakes up one day with a penis, descriptively titled “A Short Story About a Penis.” Though now a well-known writer, Schulman enjoyed limited success placing her fiction as a young writer in the early 1980s. In the middle of the feminist sex wars, “A Short Story About a Penis” racked up rejections from every significant lesbian literary magazine before finally appearing in On Our Backs, a newly launched lesbian sex magazine, in March 1986. While still struggling to place her story, Schulman created a performance piece to vent her frustration with the lesbian publishing scene. In her performance, Schulman read “A Short Story About a Penis,” which, she claimed, was the recently discovered work of a long-forgotten lesbian writer from the 1930s. In this article, I reconstruct the history of “A Short Story About a Penis” based on conversations with Schulman and the archival footprint of the performance in her personal papers. In offering an intellectual history of Schulman’s thinking on gender, sexuality, lesbian identity, and history, this article places Schulman within a genealogy of what came to be known as queer and trans, without obscuring the fraught history of lesbian in the 1980s.

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Xtra @xtramagazine.com · 12d

Queer archives not only contain our past but help unlock community. @ainopihlak.bsky.social gathers terrific insights from @arquives.ca, @rachelcorbman.bsky.social, @invisiblehistories.bsky.social, @ottawatranslibrary.bsky.social, and @leatherarchives.bsky.social.

Among the archives, you can find love, community and history | Xtra Magazine

Queer and trans archives preserve our past—they also offer community space that is essential to our future

xtramagazine.com

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Jed Samer @jedsamer.bsky.social · 12d

My article, “The Comedy of Chris E. Vargas: Trans Play at the Tipping Point,” is out now with CAMERA OBSCURA! 👯‍♂️🦜🦄📚 Shoot me a message if you’re having trouble accessing ;)

The Comedy of Chris E. Vargas: Trans Play at the Tipping Point

Abstract. This essay contends that trans comedy offers an important praxis for this post‐tipping‐point moment. Today many are wary of comedy, long familiar with the common punchline, “It's a transsexu...

read.dukeupress.edu

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rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · 24d

We have assembled to root on the Valks in their first playoff game 💜🪽🏀⚔️🐣

Longhaired tabby and spaniel sitting on the couch

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rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · 26d

selfies

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rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · 26d

review of everyone watches dyke sports!

Lesbians Are an Essential Part of Basketball History

A new exhibit called Everyone Watches Dyke Sports: Queer Histories of New York Liberty Basketball is on view at The Center in NYC.

www.autostraddle.com

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rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · 26d

Frances Simpson (1857-1926) wrote a column called Practical Pussyology, which is what WGSS should really be called

Black and white photo of a white lady with her fluffy cat

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rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · 27d

Keeping it meta: my article about a 1979 special issue of Frontiers was just published in Frontiers’ special issue for the 50th anniversary of Frontiers

muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

Project MUSE - Blame it On the Edit: Frontiers's Special Issue on Lesbian History

muse.jhu.edu

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rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · Sep 5

I’m actually really big in Germany

My interview about lesbians and cats in a German magazine

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rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · Sep 3

research assistant

Artie a longhaired tabby on the couch next to Chase Gregory’s book As If!

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rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · Sep 1

Jed and I just went to a Valkyries game in the Bay! The vibe felt very people who would know and cheer for Angela Davis.

Also, whenever someone makes a three, the Jumbotron says “what a dagger!” An artist made this shirt in a response:

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rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · Aug 30

I am shocked by the homophobia within your gay household

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rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · Aug 22

I know about this cat couple but didn’t know that Fox News found out about them 😹

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rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · Aug 21

I know that Agatha Beins said 15k subscribers in Liberation in Print- page 22. I’d have to look back to see exactly what year she was referring to but I assume late 70s.

It might also be worth emailing the archivists at UMD. They have oob’s records

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Patrick McKelvey @pmckelveyphd.bsky.social · Aug 19

"There should be a midnight showing of United in Anger every week like Rocky Horror where we say all the words that people say in their oral history interviews." -- @rachelcorbman.bsky.social

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Mattilda B Sycamore @mbsycamore.bsky.social · Aug 14

Here it is, the call for submissions for my next anthology, ACT UP BEYOND NEW YORK: Stories and Strategies from a Movement to End the AIDS Crisis, to be published by @haymarketbooks.org! Please forward widely!⚡💕⚡💕⚡ Here's the link to the call: www.mattildabernsteinsycamore.com/other

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

ACT UP BEYOND NEW YORK:
STORIES AND STRATEGIES FROM A MOVEMENT TO END THE AIDS CRISIS

Edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

(Magenta text on pink background).

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Mattilda B Sycamore @mbsycamore.bsky.social · Aug 14

Oh no!! Just posted the call for submissions for ACT UP BEYOND NEW YORK: Stories and Strategies from a Movement to End the AIDS Crisis, and the link got corrupted on my post!! Had to delete, even though so many people reposted, but I will repost in a moment, hopefully people will repost again 💕

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Kristen Hauntley CarDEATHzo @khandozo.bsky.social · Aug 7

I think Altman assumes that “PhD-level expert” means someone who speaks confidently on everything as opposed to saying “it’s nuanced,” losing their keys, and getting maniacally fixated on their current topic to the point of seeing it in everything.

J. Emory Parker 🏳️‍🌈 @jaspar.bsky.social · Aug 7

“GPT-5 is the first time that it feels like talking to an expert in any topic — a Ph.D.-level expert,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said.

Theo Sanderson @theo.io · Aug 7

(real, one-shot :p )

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rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · Aug 4

apologies if my lesbian feminist disability book ends up being a micro history of a lesbian wheelchair basketball team in the Bay Area and the one time the sisters of perpetual indulgence functioned as their cheerleaders

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rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · Jul 26

After its own night at Barclays, everyone watches dyke sports is up at the LGBT Community Center National History Archive 🗽

Come see it in August or September!

A photo of an exhibit up on a white brick wall

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Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social · Jul 24

Lesbians for Liberty flyer for kiss-in in 2002: “We’ve tried to play nice…We’ve e-mailed, called, talked to the press, leafleted, & held up signs. Now it’s time for a little old-fashioned lesbian direct action!” Can’t wait to see the Lesbian Herstory Archive exhibit at the Liberty game this Fri!

rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · Jul 23

A history of the Lesbians for Liberty’s 2002 kiss-in protest, my lesbian youth, and the Lesbian Herstory Archives’ upcoming exhibit at Barclays

www.them.us/story/lesbia...

Lesbians for Liberty: Looking Back at the WNBA Kiss-In Protest of 2002

Today, the league largely embraces its LGBTQ+ fandom. But that acceptance was hard-won.

www.them.us

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rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · Jul 24

yayyy!! excited to see you too!!

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rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · Jul 23

A history of the Lesbians for Liberty’s 2002 kiss-in protest, my lesbian youth, and the Lesbian Herstory Archives’ upcoming exhibit at Barclays

www.them.us/story/lesbia...

Lesbians for Liberty: Looking Back at the WNBA Kiss-In Protest of 2002

Today, the league largely embraces its LGBTQ+ fandom. But that acceptance was hard-won.

www.them.us

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