More than a bookstore: the continuing relevance of feminist bookstores for the lesbian community.
Feminist bookstores serve as hubs for the lesbian community, offering a "safe space" for gatherings, information dissemination, and personal exploration. In recent years, the number of feminist bookstores in the U.S. has drastically declined. This trend is often attributed to the increase in corporate bookstore chains and the emergence of online merchants. Given the wider availability of feminist and lesbian reading material, have feminist bookstores outlived their usefulness? Using survey and interview data collected from lesbian feminist bookstore customers, I show that feminist bookstores continue to be perceived as vital to the lesbian community. Respondents share powerful memories of their first visits to feminist bookstores and articulate the continued need for such enterprises in their communities. Despite these assertions, however, more than half of the women surveyed indicate that their visits to the stores have grown less frequent over time due to changes in life circumstances or decreased salience of lesbian identity. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.
Department of Social Sciences, University of Toronto at Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. kathyliddle@mindspring.com
Kathleen
K
Liddle
D001634:Bibliographies as Topic; D001877:Books; D003132:Commerce / Q000639:trends*; D019058:Community Networks; D005260:Female; D019513:Feminism; D018452:Homosexuality, Female / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D012938:Social Perception; D014481:United States