Contribution to a lesbian history session at the 2025 FILIA conference.
By Carol Ackroyd
Unless you lived through the 1970s it’s hard to grasp just how hostile society was to lesbians back then.
Everyone knows about the brutal laws against homosexuality for men. But because lesbianism was never technically outlawed, people often assume it was easier for us. It wasn’t. Not at all.
We were silenced, yes — but when we did become visible, we were feared. In the public imagination, lesbians were cast as predators. We were seen as licentious, depraved, immoral — women with a voracious sexual appetite, lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce. Even in radical and left-wing circles, we were treated with suspicion. We lived with the knowledge that this was how others saw us. It shaped everything.
And nowhere was that mistrust more brutal than in the courts. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, women who left male partners to be with another woman were routinely deemed “unfit mothers.” In custody battles, lesbians almost always lost. Courts often refused to let children even meet their mother’s partner. The message was clear: lesbian love was a threat to children.
Lesbian teachers and childcare workers were fired. It was considered unacceptable — dangerous even — for a known lesbian to work with children. The media fed the hysteria. One headline from the London Evening News screamed that “Dr Strangelove” was offering artificial insemination to lesbians. We weren’t just outsiders — we were monsters.
So, when my partner and I decided we wanted children, we knew we were stepping into a storm.
In 1978, I began talking to heterosexual friends — feminists and socialists — about wanting to have a child. The response was overwhelmingly negative. These were people I loved and trusted. They told me it was fine to be a lesbian — but not to bring a child into the world. I was called foolish, selfish, irresponsible. “Cruel,” they said, “to inflict a lesbian mother on a child.”
But we were determined. And we were arrogant. And we were strong feminists.
My partner had already fought her husband for custody of her young son — and lost. We decided we each wanted to have a child and raise them together as siblings, with two mothers. Equal children of us both. We were absolutely clear: no man involved as a father figure. We wanted anonymous sperm donors.
So, I put a note in the London Women’s Liberation newsletter, inviting other lesbians who wanted to become pregnant to contact me. Several did. We were cautious — worried about reporters or infiltrators — so we met first at Sisterwrite bookshop, keeping our addresses secret. We soon learned to trust one another and became a hugely important support group.
Our first goal was to find men willing to donate sperm with no expectation of involvement. We thought it might be easy—many men in alternative circles had scattered their seed widely by then! But we didn’t know many men ourselves, so we asked our heterosexual women friends if their partners or male friends might help. Not one said yes. Some had good reason, but for many our proposal was too shocking.
So, we turned to gay male circles. This was pre-AIDS, so that wasn’t a concern. Eventually we found a group of gay men who were willing to help as an act of solidarity with their lesbian sisters.
They organised everything beautifully.
We’d phone a central number when we were ovulating. They’d give us an address to visit, where we’d receive an anonymous tube of semen and a private bedroom. We’d inseminate ourselves with a turkey baster and lie comfortably for a while. After several months, some of us became pregnant. We all honoured the agreement: anonymity, no further involvement.
When my own children were born we gave them the surname Wild — Wild meaning free and not owned — following the practice of some North London anarchist-feminists we knew.
Our children have grown up knowing their origin stories and accepting them. Through the next decade, we built strong ties with other lesbian mothers and their children. We supported one another, exchanged childcare, organised activities and holidays together.
We were very much part of the Women’s Liberation Movement. One campaign I was in was FLIE — Feminist Lesbians in Education — which fought against Section 28 and produced a booklet on Challenging Heterosexism in Education.
There’s so much more I could say — but I want to end with this.
Today, it’s relatively common for lesbians to be open about their sexuality, to have children, to live visibly. That’s a victory. But it’s also easy to forget what it took to get here.
We didn’t just fight for our rights — we fought for our families. We fought for the right to love, to parent, to exist without shame. And we did it in the face of rejection, ridicule, and legal punishment.
We were told we couldn’t be mothers. We became mothers anyway. And since then, many of us have gone on to become grandmothers.
So, to the younger people here — especially younger lesbians — know this: your freedom was hard-won. And it’s not guaranteed. The world still needs your courage, your solidarity, your refusal to be silent.