Vicinus points out (or at least implies) a contrast that I hadn't thought much about before: the contrast between a teleological lesbian history that works to explain "how did we get to where we are now?" and a more descriptive history that asks, "what are the ways in which female same-sex desire was expressed in the past?" Any number of publications have made me twitch when they viewed "the modern lesbian" as some sort of holy grail that women in the past must surely have been ignorantly groping toward. But I hadn't thought specifically about all the other consequences of a teleological worldview. Such as: if the modern Western (white) lesbian is the apotheosis of female homoeroticism, there is an inherent judgment placed on all other experiences of f/f desire that they are lacking, imperfect, or not fully developed.
I hope it's easy to see how problematic this implication is! Some of the strands of the development of the field of lesbian history are strongly parallel with the problems of "white feminism," where one subgroup projects their own culturally-specific experiences, needs, and desires onto a broader spectrum of people who may not share the same priorities. The women who loved women in the past aren't around to protest having their lives and solutions judged as lacking, but there are plenty of examples today of how the (white) Western paradigm of homosexual identity is viewed or imposed as a universal ideal. For that matter, the shaping of gender/sexuality discourse in the '70s and '80s within a cis-gender monosexual framework has many of the same deficiencies.
So, in addition to what other value these older articles contribute to the field, examining the shifts in assumptions and defaults between their writing and our reading can help shake loose our remaining preconceptions. And we all still do have unexamined preconceptions about gender and sexuality. I know I do, and I'm quite certain you do as well.
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