Metroline Online

Timeline is a regular feature in each issue looking back to events and milestones that have helped us evolve into the community we are today.

Late August, 1994

In her interview with Victoria Brownworth, writer Dorothy Allison talks about being an outspoken proponent of sadomasochism and sex writing, and being the co-founder of the New York lesbian sex group LSM (Lesbian Sex Mafia).
“I’m a sexual outlaw,” Allison tells her interviewer.  “I hate anti-sex writing, sex-avoidant writing.  To me it is an ethical act to write about sex.  I cannot allow hatred of sex.  I write about my own life.  [My stories] come out of my life.”
Brownworth notes that much of Allison’s writing is “brutal” - like her descriptions of the lives of her teenaged mother and other women in her family, or the incest she and her sisters experienced.

“I’m currently obsessed with families,” admits Allison.  “I realize that I write a great deal about families, about mothers and children, about siblings, about where we come from.  But you should write about what you care about.  And that’s what I do.  I hate dispassionate writing.”

Dorothy Allison’s work includes Bastard Out of Carolina, Cavedweller, Skin: Talking About Sex, Class & Literature, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, and The Women Who Hate Me: Poetry 1980 - 1990.
Her writing has been described as being “elegant and raw, as fine and delicate as a tear, as hard and unyielding as a diamond.” Allison continues to be one of the most outspoken American lesbian writers in history.  Her stories and life are “a triumph of love over cruelty.”