... having been breathed out

Lesbian pulps formed their own distinctive category within the wider medium, but the genre is not easy to define, nor are its borders obvious. For one, because sales figures are not readily available, it is impossible to pinpoint readership. This imprecision complicates the usual division made between the “lesbian-friendly” subgenre—around a dozen titles, subject to scholarly attention and frequent reprints by feminist presses—within the tawdry horde, written, it is claimed, “for men and by men” to fulfill straight men’s fantasies. For instance, Vin Packer’s (Marijane Meaker) 1952 effort for Fawcett Gold Medal, Spring Fire[,] is beloved in lesbian circles for its generally insightful and sympathetic portrayal of the vaguely butch-femme sorority romance between Mitch and Leda. Far from negotiating a secret path of veiled rebellion through what is commonly seen as a misogynistic and voyeuristic genre, though, Meaker’s book was an acknowledged superstar; apparently selling over one million copies, it—along with the 1950 bestseller, Women’s Barracks—kick-started Fawcett’s immediate foray into the genre. In short, it was not simply closeted lesbians in New Jersey purchasing the novels.

—Anastasia Jones, “Lesbian Pulp Novels, 1935-1965”

The whole blog post is interesting, but the bolded point in particular is something I haven’t really thought about before: that lesbian pulps written by lesbians were overall a minority within the genre, yet not necessarily a struggling or sidelined minority, even among the public at large (i.e. not just among queer readers or socially conscious readers). I find it vaguely encouraging that books about lesbians by actual lesbians–in a market that was essentially gender- and sexuality-blind, since female authors often wrote under male pen names and vice versa–were at least as popular if not more so than books about lesbians by men.