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discussionWho remembers the Sappho mailing list of the late 1980s, hosted at blooombeacon.mit.edu?
I was thinking about young women being indoctrinated by ideologies today, and wondered how I came to understand what a women-loving community of women could be. Like many young women today, especially women who love women, I learned about living as a lesbian from other lesbians I met online. Just as then, even in Santa Cruz, my dating pool was small, and lesbian events were rare and hard to hear about.
That's when I remembered the Sappho listserv hosted at a server at MIT. So many different lesbians, mostly North America, but it was international. Yes, we had our raging discussion of bisexuality, separatism, and BDSM. But mostly, we talked about our lives, coming out, falling in love, living as woman-loving women. I first heard about k.d. lang there.
Was anyone else here on that listserve? Somewhere in my basement I have ancient printouts of some of the discussions. I don't remember what the topics are. But I wonder if there is any other record of what we were talking about? Now I want to go find them.
I found this page, about the list. on the InternetArchive. AMBAR, the founder of the list is still active in IT, per her LinkedIn page.
Queer digital has a few links to articles about lists, but not about what was discussed there, or how important they were to the women who participated.