"Outing History:" Blanche Wiesen Cook

Historically the romance of the closet and the perspective of the fortress became necessary barricades against bigotry and pain.

(Cook 1994, 52)

Historian, journalist, activist, and Distinguished Professor, Blanche Wiesen Cook is also celebrated for helping to kick open the closets of the academy, specifically the historical profession, specifically regarding lesbianism. In 1979, she published two revolutionary articles, "The Historical Denial of Lesbianism: A Review Essay" (Cook 1979a) and "'Women Alone Stir My Imagination': Lesbianism and the Cultural Tradition" (Cook 1979b). Cook then followed up fifteen years later with an assessment of feminist truth-telling in the writing of women's lives when she published "Outing History" in 1994.

Now, just over fifteen years after "Outing History" appeared, we find ourselves in a time of curious ambiguity regarding the issue of lesbian visibility. In the popular media in 2010 we find not one but two openly lesbian celebrities hosting their own television talk shows;¹ in the academy, courses in lesbian history are available on some college campuses. However, it also is a time when the issue of female (and male) couples marrying is such a hot topic that it is a regular feature in newscasts as well as classrooms. Even the august American Historical Association wrestled with the fallout from a recent bruising electoral battle over same-sex marriage. Early in 2009, the AHA debated whether to hold its long-scheduled 2010 annual conference in San Diego at the Manchester Hyatt Hotel, which was under siege by queer activists because of its owner's significant financial support of Proposition 8, the bigoted 2008 California ballot measure that overturned a State Supreme Court decision giving gay people the right to marry. The AHA's response was to organize a special mini-conference of plenary sessions, panels, and roundtables on various historical aspects of marriage, all scheduled to be held in the belly of the beast—the Manchester Hyatt. The idea was to push back intellectually and historically while shielding the organization from harmful financial losses. Although well-intentioned, the decision nonetheless had the impact of forcing queer historians and their allies to breach a boycott in order to participate.² Some, like Cook and her partner of more than four decades Clare Coss, joined the protest rally organized by local activists just outside the Hotel while also supporting the efforts of those within the AHA who had organized the conference-within-a-conference on marriage. It was a delicate balance, one that reflects the challenges that still confront the scholar of lesbianism in the twenty-first century: "the romance of the closet and the perspective of the fortress" persist. So too does fear—fear of the power of female-centered lives.

As Blanche Wiesen Cook wrote in 1979: "The historical denial of lesbianism accompanies the persistent refusal to acknowledge the variety and intensity of women's emotional and erotic experiences" (Cook 1979a, 60). With these words, she introduced her classic review of a then-recent work by Anna Mary Wells on the lives of Jeannette Marks and Anna Woolley, academic leaders and activists, who also created and sustained a passionate relationship of more than four decades (Wells 1978). Cook critiqued the author's inability to accept her subjects' "sexual deviation" yet recognized that she affirmed the significance of their relationship. Cook wrote, "Thus companionate women who have lived together all their adult lives have been branded, on no evidence whatsoever, 'lonely spinsters'" (Cook 1979a, 60). In her review, she also pointed future scholars to the existence of a treasure trove of daily letters and notes between Marks and Woolley, housed at Mt. Holyoke College.

Thirty years—and hundreds of citations—later, it is clear that her radical way of viewing women's lives and loves provides an important demarcation point in the history of the historical profession. Since 1979, she has inspired countless numbers of men and women—myself included—not only to follow our passions but also to insist on the validity of passionate lives within the works we produce. Because of her boldness, her thoughtfulness, and her generosity, we all, today, have the...