Today is Lesbian Visibility Day! Last year on this day, we published a roundtable asking our writers who identify as lesbians to talk about why they chose that label and how it affects the way they move through the world. This year, we asked: What are you most proud of about the lesbian community/our history? If you also identify as a lesbian, we’d love for you to share your answer in the comments!
Lesbian Visibility Day 2019 Roundtable: Celebrating Our History and Our Future
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Alexis, Thank You! your story made me realize this is true for me tooo and I just had like blurred out that change in my memory and thank you for restoring a part of myself.
I loved last year’s roundtable and I loved this year’s roundtable. Thank you for sharing all of your beautiful stories. I am weeping into my morning coffee.
I loved this, and shouts out to reading a lot of lesbian theory while “straight”. 💜 Thanks Kayla for making me feel so seen!!
<3
Happy Lesbian Visibility Day!
Kayla And Molly making me feel so seen
I always love these, and ever appreciate that as my gender identity has evolved Autostraddle as a platform has always been inclusive and smart about trans folks. Y’all are so good.
I have been reading a lot about lesbians of history this past year or so, and I would say that I am most proud that so many of them were weirdos who got shit done.
This provides inspiration for me, a weirdo, to get shit done.
I want that on a t-shirt!
LESBIANS: WEIRDOS WHO GET SHIT DONE
Lesbians get shit done
I love how much potency of feeling & experience y’all were able to pack into single paragraphs. Thanks for this roundtable.
I was going to mention lesbians stepping up during the AIDS crisis but then Carrie did it for me! Yes!
Carrie, I also really related to this: “I will well and truly never need a man for anything. I can invite them into my life and enjoy their presence there (and I do), but they will never be the point and I will never owe them that.”
Alexis, I never explicitly put this together, but hard same on feeling like I was never really a “romantic” or even a shipper, to the point that I wondered if I was aromantic (although not in those terms; I didn’t know of that precise concept at the time). Turns out, nope, I’m just real gay.
AL YOUR WHOLE SECTION. I’ve reread it a dozen times. It sums up so many of my thoughts on lesbianism and identity and who we choose to center in our lives and loves and you do it so beautifully and powerfully and wonderfully and just plain fully. Thank you.
Also, my (bi) gf just told me “Don’t do any robberies; they can see you today” and I felt this was a useful warning to share here.
Wise woman you got there.
“Hello being a lesbian has been one of the greatest gifts God has bestowed upon me, amen” Thank you Alexis, AMEN is right!!
ok so uh i have an important question which is:
as a trans lesbian, am i fully visible two days of the year, or half-visible on both? am i translucent today?? (pun not originally intended but we’re gonna roll with it)
IMPORTANT QUESTION
TRANSLUCENT I’M CRYING <3
comment award, please!
“Being lesbian teaches me that you’ll only learn about the parts of yourself you suffocate once you feel safe enough to let at least one of them come up for air.”
Alexis, I FELT THESE WORDS. <3
This is perfect and I love ya’ll and yes, Happy Lesbian Visibility Day!
Reading this made me so happy. I love all you guys. *hugs*
There is soooo much to be proud of! So many women worked so hard to make us possible. Without the amount of work these women did, and courage they mustered, and the fortitude they showed by sitting through endless processing meetings, know I would be a confused, bitter, and depressed housewife today.
Caveat- these are the women who popped first into my head. I know I am missing/forgetting many, many more.
I truly appreciate the women who lived their truth and worked their asses of to create a lesbian community from a complete vacuum, especially the women who weren’t rich enough to afford a fuck-you-all attitude (e.g. Gertrude Stein, Natalie Barney, and Joe Carstairs). Big thanks to Barbara Gittings (librarian pride!) and Del Martin and all of the other Daughters of Bilitis, Audre Lorde, Joan Nestle, Barbara Grier, Mab Segrest, Mandy Carter, Urvashi Vaid, Ann Northrop Leslie Feinberg, and Minnie Bruce Pratt, just to name a few. I appreciate the work of Susie Bright, Dorothy Allison, JoAnn Loulan, and Pat Califia for helping us live our sexual truths no matter the pushback.
I don’t know how long it would have taken me to come out if I hadn’t been given Rita Mae Brown’s “Rubyfruit Jungle” by a woman who realized who I was before I did. Because of that book and her Lesbian Menacing, I don’t say anything about her Sneaky Pie books.
Attending the 1987 March on Washington and seeing so many out women made me realize I was part of a bigger thing. Thank you to those organizers.
Books, magazines, theater, music, film…So much to be proud of.
I was formed by:
Reading publications such as On our backs and Off our Backs and Outweek and Lesbian Connection and Curve and Deneuve.
Going to concerts by the Indigo Girls, Two Nice Girls, Ani DiFranco, Girls in the Nose.
Laughing at the comedy of Kate Clinton, Suzanne Westenhoefer, Karen Williams, Lisa Koch, and Marga Gomez shows.
What else? Ann Bannon and Desert Hearts and Ellen’s Puppy Episode and Madonna’s Sex book…
Even though at the time I balked against the earnestness of the “scene”, I am proud of and eternally grateful to all of the lesbians in Durham, NC in the late 1980s and early 1990s who created lesbian community through: The Newsletter mailed out to let us know what the heck was going on; the Triangle Area Lesbian Feminists; the women who put on all of the women’s dances at the Universalist Church spaces; the women’s concerts produced by Real Women Productions (even though I really didn’t love the white-girls-with-acoustic guitars sound)); the lesbian-owned businesses where almost every local lesbian worked at one time (Francesca’s Dessert Café, Travis Place (mail order underwear),and Ladyslipper Music label/distributor (I worked at Ladyslipper, FWIW.)); the women who organized Durham’s Pride Marches; and those who worked to buy the house for the early 90s lesbian only space “Our Own Place.”
Although I am too much of a candy-ass for direct action, I am so proud of the Lesbian Avengers and the Garden Variety Lesbians (Garden Variety Lesbians was an action taken by the Lesbian Avengers in response to lesbian bashing by NC senator Jesse Helms. In 1993, when then-president Bill Clinton wanted to appoint ‘out’ lesbian Roberta Achtenberg as assistant secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Helms held up the confirmation, stating, “I’m not going to put a lesbian in a position like that. If you want to call me a bigot, fine,” and adding, “She’s not your garden-variety lesbian. She’s a militant, activist, mean lesbian.” In response, Anna Clark, Katherine O’Brien, Barb Smalley, Catherine Nicholson, and perhaps others went to Helms’ office in protest.- http://www.durhamlgbtqhistory.org/)
I am also proud of the work of (and my small contributions to) The North Carolina Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (renamed OutSouth Queer Film Festival in 2020) and lesbian theater (acting in the Lesbian Thespian Productions and Dale Wolf’s piece, In the Outfield, which is about growing up as a butch lesbian, and performing a monologue as a woman leaving an abusive lesbian relationship which Dorothy Allison saw (and told me that she thought I was cute as she liked herself a soft butch! Peak life experience that one.))
As for the lesbian world today, I am proud that we keep evolving. Although arguing amongst ourselves is always-and-probably-will-forever-be a lesbian/queer thing, I am proud that we keep redefining ourselves, keep each other honest, and that our umbrella canopy has gotten bigger. Oh, and thanks for the body positivity ethos.
Great comment
Thanks! Definitely long.
❤ for all the NC! I was in Durham 1989-1991 right before I came out and in Carrboro 2002-2004 long after I came out. I have fond memories of Francesca’s, Travis Place, & Ladyslipper.
Also I was first exposed to Dykes to Watch Out For thanks to the magazine & newspaper section of Regulator
Hey, Meghan! We might have passed each other on 9th St! How did you get to Minneapolis? I have a deep fascination with that city, but have never been there. It seems from my Instagram exposure, that EVERY SINGLE PERSON THERE IS QUEER.
We might have passed each other at some point!
I got a job here in 2004 and have been here ever since. I never thought I’d stay more than a few years. And here I still am.
Almost all my family is in NC so it still has quite a pull on me.
Cool, cool, cool!
Oh Beth Ann, this is beautiful! ❤️ Thank you. My heart is so full reading this.
<3
Love this!
Thank you, Al(aina,) for helping a non-binary person (me) who does date some non-women feel like it’s okay to identify as a lesbian. I came out as a lesbian in 2007 and then queer later and then non-binary and lately swinging back around to lesbian because I just love women so much and want to celebrate and center them all day every day.
Thank you for this!
Oh wow Carrie same same same same same. Realizing that I had no need for cis men at all in my life for anything, that I didn’t *have* to depend on them or honor them or center them in any way was the most freeing moment of my entire existence. The amount of conversations I have with straight women where I say some version of “yeah but I don’t care about men’s opinions/feelings/priorities like AT ALL” and they look at me like I just told them we can really fly if we try hard enough is pretty amazing.
Also not feeling obligated to wear heels literally ever again has been the other best part of being a lesbian.
“yeah but I don’t care about men’s opinions/feelings/priorities like AT ALL”
This is a WORD. Thank You!
First of all, I welcome you very much. He has given his very good information. You continue to give such information even further. Through which we all get a lot of help. We know that you will have a lot of effort, then you must have written all this. Thank you very much again.