Containing Voices of Memory: Lesbianism, Second-Wave Feminism, and the Queer Mnemonic Voice-Outtake in MAKERS: The Women Who Make America

Applying theories of voice, feminist film and extratextual media studies, and queer rhetorical memory, this article considers how lesbian feminism in the American second-wave feminist movement is remembered in the 2013 documentary film MAKERS: The Women Who Make America. The film minimizes and omits the voices of lesbian women, thereby overlooking the queer memories they express of the feminist movement. Many of these voices are only made accessible through the MAKERS official website, and thus, they become examples of "queer mnemonic voice-outtakes" whose containment on the MAKERS website aids in the negation of queer memories of the feminist past. However, this article also finds that queer feminist memory is presented only through white lesbian women, as the voices of black lesbian feminists featured in MAKERS never provide their own insights into how their sexuality influenced their feminist politics.