Editing Daughters of Bilitis (section)

===Naming===

The group named the club at their second meeting. ''Bilitis'' is the name given to a fictional lesbian contemporary of the Greek poet [[Sappho]] by the French poet [[Pierre Louÿs]] in his 1894 work ''[[The Songs of Bilitis]]''.<ref>"And Now We Are 3..." ''The Ladder'', Oct 1958, Vol. 3 Issue 1, p4.</ref> Bilitis lived on the [[Lesbos Island|Isle of Lesbos]] alongside Sappho. The women chose the name for its obscurity; even Martin and Lyon did not know what it meant.<ref>Gallo, p. 2</ref> "Daughters" was meant to evoke association with other American social associations such as the [[Daughters of the American Revolution]]. 

Early DOB members felt they had to follow two contradictory approaches: trying to recruit interested potential members and being secretive. Martin and Lyon justified the name, writing later, "If anyone asked us, we could always say we belong to a poetry club."<ref>Meeker, p. 78</ref> They also designed a pin to wear to be able to identify with others, chose club colors and voted on the [[motto]] "''Qui vive''", French for "on alert". The organization filed a charter for [[non-profit]] corporation status in 1957, writing a description so vague, Phyllis Lyon remembered, "it could have been a charter for a cat-raising club."<ref>Tobin, p. 52</ref>