Margaret Small

Margaret Small is an American lesbian activist and was noted for teaching Lesbianism 101 with Madeline Davis at the State University of New York Buffalo. This is the first lesbianism course in the United States. The students occupied Knights' house during the protest. Small obtained her master's degree at SUNY Buffalo in 1973. She was also a contributor to the lesbian-feminist anthology, Lesbianism and the Women's Movement. In 1972, Small and Madeline Davis taught Lesbianism 101 at the University at Buffalo's Women Studies College. It was the first class in an American university that taught lesbian issues. Three years later, she published “Lesbians and the Class Position of Women”, an essay that offered a Marxist interpretation of "lesbian consciousness". In this text, she identified the concept as part of the struggle to free women from oppression. She argued that lesbians have a capability to create new ways of understanding the material conditions that determine class positions of women. She maintained that, since lesbians are objectively outside of the framework of this ideology, they have the potential for developing an alternative ideology, one that is not limited by heterosexuality.