Villiage Voice newspaper maven Jill Johnston has died from a stroke at the age of 81.
During her lifetime, Johnston was a pioneer for the lesbian and feminist communities. Authoring what many considered the lesbian bible Lesbian Nation: The Feminist Solution in 1974, Johnston was a lead figure in the movement towards equality and social justice in the LGBT community. The accomplished writer regularly wrote artistic columns for the Village Voice as well as other poignant feminist pieces that shaped the world we currently see before us today as lesbians in America and around the world.
Johnston would also birth the book Admission Accomplished in 1998 (in addition to other works throughout her fruitful career). “The centrality of the lesbian position to feminist revolution — wildly unrealistic or downright mad, as it still seems to most women everywhere — continues to ring true and right.”
Many critics say that Johnston spearheaded the feminist movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s. At one point in her career, Johnston wrote on her website, “I had a forum obviously set up for covering or perpetrating all manner of outrage.”
She also shared about her time at the Village Voice, “Now I was a chronicler of my own life, by 60s standards perhaps not too egregiously adventurous and experimental, but in a newspaper in full public view, in the most fractured Dada style of work I had admired as a critic — a rather wild spectacle in those woolly times.”
Johnston shared with The Gay and Lesbian Review in 2006, “Once I understood the feminist doctrines, a lesbian separatist position seemed the commonsensical position, especially since, conveniently, I was an L-person. Women wanted to remove their support from men, the ‘enemy’ in a movement for reform, power and self-determination.”
Johnston was once married to Richard Lanham for six years before their divorce in 1964. Their marriage produced two children - Richard Lanham and Winifred Lanham – and four grandchildren. She later went on to marry Ingrid Nyeboe in northwestern Connecticut. The couple had legally married in Connecticut in 2009, but had already committed to one another in a ceremony in Denmark back in 1993. Connecticut legalized marriage for gays and lesbians in 2008. Johnston and Nyeboe shared a home in Connecticut before Johnston’s untimely passing on September 18, 2010.
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