The research for this volume ends approximately with the 1990s. This is primarily because, as an illegal identity, the gay women's bar culture that predominated the female gay landscape and experience from 1945–75 did not, for the most part, survive past the 1980s. For some this experience ended in the early 1970s, for some bar attendees the bar remained “the only place.” However for gay women “coming out” in the mid-1970s and beyond, the lesbian bar was no longer “the only place,” nor was butch-femme the primary organizing principle for gay women.

This work is a beginning history of butch-femme culture, its primary meeting and organizing space, the gay women's bar, and its meaning.