Nancy Manahan

“I didn't know I was in love with her. I only knew that the chapel vibrated when she walked in, and my stomach lurched when she knelt soundlessly behind me. I longed for her touch.”
― Nancy Manahan, Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence

“Ironically groups of nuns or lesbians are often mistaken for one another today, since we often travel in female packs oblivious to male attention or needs. Eschewing the cosmetics and costumes of the commercially promoted feminine mystique, both nuns and lesbians are emotionally inaccessible to male coercion. Time and energy which heterosexual women devote to catering to men can be focused on private or communal projects. Despite similarities, a male-defined culture which moralizes about "sins of the flesh" and the pollution and evil of women's carnal desires sees both nuns and lesbians as "unnatural" but at opposite poles on a scale of female virtue.”
― Nancy Manahan, Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence