Middle and Ring: Lesbian Histories and Futures

My goals for Middle and Ring:

• To store all the books, photos, essays, and ephemera I have found that relate to lesbian lives and lesbian existence
• To feel like I'm contributing to lesbian and queer women's history
• To resist the desexualization and monetization of LGBT identity in social media and mainstream Internet venues

Middle and Ring is always under construction
and new documents are frequently added.
Write to me to suggest documents for inclusion.

I have a lot of PDFs saved and I want to share them. I want to express my sexuality in its wholeness without feeling obliged by corporate media interests or anti-sex, anti-human laws to stifle or kill any part of it. I feel like LGBT sexuality is increasingly censored, suppressed, and drawn into enforced privacy; or even smothered in the cradle before it has a chance to grow and live; and upsettingly often, this censorship is performed by members of our own community.

Ada Palmer writes, "We tend to think of censorship as aiming to destroy information that already exists. But when we observe the real behaviors of bodies like the Inquisition, they rarely attempt that—focusing instead on labeling or policing information, trying to control who accesses what, and on spreading fear of their authority... the majority of censorship is self-censorship, but the majority of self-censorship is intentionally cultivated by a censoring authority" (emphasis mine). We must strive not be our own censors.

James Baldwin writes, "The journey to the grave is already begun, the journey to corruption is, always, already, half over. Yet, the key to my salvation, which cannot save my body, is hidden in my flesh."

Hélène Cixous writes, "Who, surprised and horrified by the fantastic tumult of her drives (for she was made to believe that a well-adjusted normal woman has a ... divine composure), hasn’t accused herself of being a monster? Who, feeling a funny desire stirring inside her (to sing, to write, to dare to speak, in short, to bring out something new), hasn’t thought she was sick?"

All this is to say that lesbian sexuality is a lifesaver, and so is anything your body feels that allows you to spit in the eye of the person who told you you were wrong.

Signed, the webmistress
February 2022