This genealogical study examines the ways in which the discourse of identity shapes lesbianism activism as it surfaced in response to the misogynistic lesbophobia inherent to US feminist and homophilic identity political groups in the mid to late 20th century. In particular, the dissertation focuses on identity politics models that are premised upon theories of social inclusion, where recognition and visibility are presumed to signal social integration. In this register, inclusion proves to be a problematic trope because it gave rise to the demand for authenticity and the democratic prioritization of the majority stakeholders’ needs in identity political groups. In the spirit of accommodation, political lesbians capitulated to heteronormative pressures and disavowed desire, reinstating a feminist hegemony that masqueraded as “lesbian” resistance. Accordingly, this research endeavors to ascertain why lesbianism was open to critiques from other identity political groups and what mechanisms allowed lesbianism to be subsumed within those discourses. The identity politics models described herein are premised upon the assumption that visibility equals power. Because lesbian desire is not visibly inscribed on the body, lesbians may deploy strategies of misrecognition that make risk-aversive behaviors such as passing commonplace for the lesbian. Yet, identitarian groups used political models based upon the necessity of honesty, transparency, and visibility, making identity politics a hostile terrain wherein the lesbian activist found herself enmeshed. Contemporary theorists, however, have picked up on the importance of misrecognition, play, and performativity, but, when executed within the discourse of identity, critical responses reproduce hegemonic strategies of containment that normalize difference. This analysis documents moments of strategic misrecognition that operate successfully because of a conscious acknowledgement of lesbian exclusion from the social. While this research holds that identity political groups are excluded from the social to their detriment, the dissertation looks into the possibility that systemic exclusion may entail freedom and may produce novel counteralignments to the regime of identity, focusing, instead, on important “differences that make a difference.”