Sunday, April 26th is Lesbian Visibility Day. In conclusion lesbian visibility week It started last Monday. Originally founded in 2008. National Coalition for LGBT Health — and separately by a group of American lesbian activists who launched a social media campaign called “I’m a Lesbian” that same year — Lesbian Visibility Day combats lesbianphobia, the hatred, discrimination, violence, and erasure of lesbians within and outside the LGBTQ community.
With the rise of anti-LGBTQ and reproductive health care bills and court decisions, there has never been a better time to consider the intersectionality of fighting for gay and women’s rights and recognizing gay women as integral to the feminist movements that shaped America today.
Lesbians were important to the American liberation movement from the beginning. Lesbian and queer women were key leaders and organizers of the women’s suffrage movement, including Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, Jane Addams, Annie Tinker, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Molly Dewson, and Sophonisba Breckinridge. Some of these women were living in what is known as a same-sex partnership. “Marriage in Boston” A time when homosexuality was illegal.
Similarly, during the second wave feminist movement, lesbians key activist She fought to incorporate LGBTQ equality issues into the women’s movement.
Lesbian and queer organizers such as Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Barbara Smith, and Rita Mae Brown fought for intersectional activism, drawing attention to how sexism, racism, homophobia, and ableism intersect to oppress women and other marginalized groups. However, many of these lesbian activists faced a backlash from the mainstream women’s movement known as the “lavender threat” that threatened the progress of the women’s movement.
Betty Friedan, then president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), first used the term in 1969, ironically the same year as the Stonewall riots, referring to the danger that incorporating lesbian issues into the mainstream women’s movement could affect the success and timeliness of women’s rights. Friedan and other NOW members worried that the deliberate inclusion of lesbians in NOW and its causes would give the impression that the movement was full of misandrists and “a bunch of dykes.”
That same year, Now removed the Daughters of Bilitis, America’s first lesbian organization, from its list of sponsors for the First Women’s United Conference, held in November 1969.
accordinglya group of lesbian radical feminists reclaimed the term during their protests at the Second Women’s United Convention in 1970. The group, called Radical Lesbians, stormed the second convention, along with members of the Gay Liberation Front and other allied groups, to demand that the feminist movement embrace and intentionally include lesbian and queer women. Lesbians, queer women, and their allies lined the aisles of the auditorium. shout with a sign “We are all lesbians” and “Lesbianism is a conspiracy for women’s liberation.”
As Carla Jay, another member of Lavender Menace, stood in the audience. said“Yes, yes, sisters! I’m tired of being in the closet because of the women’s movement.”
This moment was a significant challenge to the movement’s tendency to foreground the experiences and rights of white heterosexual women, and was celebrated not only by feminists of color, who often feel their voices are not heard and their experiences not represented in the movement, but also encouraged members of the feminist movement to confront their own lesbophobia. The remainder of the second Women’s Unity Conference was replaced by a workshop on issues facing lesbian women and a dance sponsored by the Gay Liberation Front at the Church of the Holy Apostles.
At the end of the meeting, Lavender Menace members shared with NOW leaders the resolution they and NOW members had developed during the two-day workshop, and by 1971, NOW passed a resolution in support of lesbians. However, Friedan did not acknowledge the important contributions of lesbian women to the feminist movement until six years later, at the 1977 National Women’s Conference.
Many have noted how the fear and exclusion of lesbian and queer women in the movement of Friedan and other feminists is deeply connected to current opposition to the inclusion of trans women in contemporary feminist circles. Feminists who prioritize womanhood solely based on sex assigned at birth, sometimes referred to as TERFS or trans-exclusionary radical feminists, perpetuate the same gender restrictions on women’s spaces that Friedan and others did more than 50 years ago. This time, it excludes not only trans women but also intersex women, denying that transphobia is an important issue for feminists. Black cis women are particularly vulnerable to transphobic violence.
It has never been more clear that women’s liberation is lesbian liberation, women’s liberation is BIPOC women’s liberation, and women’s liberation is transgender women’s liberation. Indeed, the fourth and fifth wave feminist movements, which first emerged in the early 2000s, strive to return collective, intersectional action, rather than individual empowerment, to the center of the movement. Some feminists are even joining transgender-led organizations. gender liberation movementfounded in 2024 by Raquel Willis and Eliel Cruz, fights for bodily autonomy and advances organizing and policies that liberate all people from gender expectations.
Lesbianphobia is still alive and well
Lesbianphobia is not a thing of the past, so protecting the rights of lesbian, bisexual, and queer women has never been more timely. recent backlash Netflix’s announcement that the next season of Bridgerton will feature a sapphic storyline reveals that lesbophobia is alive and well, even in stories involving bisexual and gay men. has received praise from critics and fans. In fact, TV shows featuring lesbian and queer women have been drastically reduced. In 2022, 2/3 or more Of all the LGBTQ shows that were canceled, the ones that starred gay women. Sadly, lesbianphobia is still alive and well, along with the fetishization of lesbian and queer women online.
And how Friedan and other NOW leaders’ concerns about lesbians resonate with current TERF behavior toward trans women, “lavenderphobia,” or the systematic firing of LGBTQ employees during the McCarthy era. make a comeback. Many of the people fired by the federal government during this period are still alive today and have never received an apology for how they were treated and discarded by the federal government.
The current administration has fired diversity, equity, and inclusion workers, disbanded LGBTQ employee resource groups, and earlier this month sought to request access to the medical records of millions of federal employees, retirees, and their families, another reminder of its history of excluding LGBTQ people.
As CNN Reported earlier this montha notice sent in December to insurance companies that offer Postal Service Health Benefits Plan health benefits to federal employees asks them to provide “service and cost data,” which the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) claims will be used to ensure “competitive, high-quality, and affordable plans.”
Michael Martinez, a senior adviser at Democracy Forward, told CNN earlier this month that OPM has given no insight into how this information will be used and protected, and warned that it could be used to target people who seek or have had an abortion, or those who have received or inquired about gender-affirming care, again linking trans liberation with women’s liberation and the protection of bodily autonomy.
Therefore, as we celebrate Lesbian Visibility Week, it is important to recognize how lesbian women seeking intersectionality (along with Black, Indigenous, and Latinx women who have continued this work for centuries) fundamentally changed the trajectory of the feminist movement, and how their calls for intersectionality remain timely and relevant.
Emma Cieslik He is also a museum employee and public historian.
Source: Washington Blade: LGBTQ News, Politics, LGBTQ Rights, Gay News – www.washingtonblade.com
