Barbara Love

Barbara Joan Love (February 27, 1937 – November 13, 2022) was an American feminist writer and the editor of Feminists who Changed America, 1963–1975.

With the National Organization for Women, Love organized and participated in demonstrations, and she also worked within the organization to improve its acceptance of lesbian feminists.

She helped to found consciousness-raising groups for lesbian feminists and was active in the gay liberation movement.

With fellow feminist Sidney Abbott, she co-authored Sappho Was a Right-on Woman: A Liberated View of Lesbianism, which she hoped would lead to greater awareness of society's oppression of women and lesbians.

She also helped in the presentation to the American Psychiatric Association which led to the removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Love was born on February 27, 1937, and grew up in Ridgewood, New Jersey.

Her Danish father was a hosiery manufacturer.

The king of Denmark decorated him for his role during the war as an underground agent.

He also worked for Radio Free Europe.

Her mother, Lois Love, whose ancestors were from colonial Massachusetts, was involved in community activities.

Love had two brothers.

At 12 years of age as a competitive swimmer, she was the first person in New Jersey to break the record of the 100 yard freestyle in under a minute.

Love had several potential areas of contention with her parents as a Democratic lesbian feminist.

The most significant concern of her "far right" Republican parents was that she was a Democrat.

She became isolated from the rest of the family because she had friends who were not Protestants or Country Club members and many that were poor.

She also "wondered why women had to be in the kitchen while men were in the living room discussing things of world import."

Love began having crushes on girls in middle school, but did not realize she was a lesbian and did not have anyone to talk to about her feelings.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, she lived in Greenwich Village and frequented lesbian bars in New York City.

After cutting her hair short, she was beaten by a group of men.

Love became involved in the women's movement and the National Organization for Women (NOW) when there was a small New York chapter and national board.

She learned about it while interviewing Long John Nebel, meeting with a NOW founder, Muriel Fox, and talking to the Long Island Press journalist Dolores Alexander who had interviewed Betty Friedan.

She was invited to a meeting of the chapter's board of directors at Friedan's apartment in the Dakota Building.

Aside from Friedan, whom she found "harsh and demanding," other activists included Rita Mae Brown and Kate Millett.

Barbara helped to organize some of the group's demonstrations and participated in the demonstration against The New York Times, Colgate-Palmolive, and men-only restaurants and hotels.

The demonstration against The New York Times called for integration of want ads for men and women.

At that time there was a 25% discount for jobs filled by women, which is an equal pay for equal work issue.

Friedan, reflecting the tenor of some other heterosexual members of NOW, stated initially that the presence of lesbians in the organization was damaging to their image.

Barbara Love's public response was: "My life had gotten better since I’d joined NOW and even better when I joined the women forging the beginnings of lesbian liberation," which reflected her intention to have lesbianism accepted as a feminist issue within NOW.

Love developed the Foremost Women in Communications by compiling the information, editing it, and having it published.

Love studied journalism and graduated in 1959 from Syracuse University.

After graduation, she taught at an American school in Italy.

In 1968 she told her mother she was gay.

Her mother's response was "First to thine own self be true".

Lois Love supported her daughter in gay rights and pride marches and in the founding of the now national Parents of Gays (PFLAG).

She began the work in 1970 having realized the need to create a resource of the women's accomplishments and ability in the communication field.

Feeling unaccepted by the gay and women's movements, Love and other lesbian feminists formed consciousness raising groups and encouraged other lesbians to join.

Another coordinator was Sidney Abbott, who became Love's lover and co-author.

In the 1970s they were fellow members of Radicalesbians.

With Elizabeth Shanklin, Love founded the Matriarchists, a radical feminist group.

It hosted conferences, held consciousness-raising sessions, wrote position papers, and in the early 1970s published a newspaper entitled Matriarchists.