There were few images of what a lesbian looked like before the 1970s, though people might have discovered a couple of pictures of Radclyffe Hall from the early 20th century or a few lines of a poem by Sappho. Women who loved other women were hidden, didn’t call themselves lesbians, tried not to look different, or hoped they were hidden in male or female roles. As lesbian feminists, we grew out of the gay and women’s movements, which emerged out of the hippie, student, women’s, red, black, and antiwar movements. We were part of all of these movements, and we were also building our own, to change the world.
We wanted to be visible.
On the west coast we wore hiking boots, jeans, plaid jackets, anything that previously had been seen as male and made us feel comfortable and powerful. I remember designing an image that said “Lesbian Sisters, Proud and Strong Rise” with a semicircle arch of women using the symbol of Pluto which represents female and revolution. We put it on posters and wore it on our T-shirts.
Violence against all women and specifically lesbians was constant at that time. We had to be strong and work in groups.
We fought with the women who had survived by being butch and femme. We were fighting to free ourselves of all roles. We were sick of male power and privilege. We called ourselves lesbians at a time when most of our sisters called themselves gay. We didn’t want to be invisible within the sexist gay movement.
When I came out in 1971, I was shocked and hurt to discover that my sisters in the women’s movement, women I’d known for years, suddenly did not want to accept us as out lesbians. The Vancouver women’s liberation newspaper, The Pedestal, refused lesbian content. They said that being a lesbian was an American cultural import. We needed our own paper.
I moved to Toronto in 1972 to work with another lesbian feminist to start that newspaper, which we called The Other Woman. We felt “other.” As we fought our way into public life, we acted different, we looked different, and our energy was different. We were fighting to say it was okay to be a tomboy, to ride a motorcycle, and to wear boots. We were fighting for the right to hug, kiss, and make love with other women. We were fighting for our right to be out in the streets. We were rebelling against all the constraints that dictated what a woman had to look like, act like, and talk about. We had to push hard to create safe public spaces for ourselves. We had no legal rights and laws imprisoned many of us in mental institutions. Our children were taken from us. We were treated as criminals, as crazies, as perverted. We were beaten up, raped and killed. We were shunned. We were women to be feared by other women and men. To be seen, to look like or act like or talk about lesbians meant we stood out.
Our only way forward was to flaunt our new lives. When we were in a group in a restaurant or on the street, we would act out by deliberately hugging and kissing each other. We had to protect that space, as men would often try to interfere by making hostile comments, coming on to us, or attacking us. Women would turn away from us. We asked the new women’s centre at 31 Dupont St. if we could have a room in which to lay out our new national newspaper. After much discussion and hesitation, they agreed to let us use the top floor. We printed our first edition in late 1972. It contained articles on lesbians, the women’s movement in Vietnam, poetry, photographs, graphics of women loving women, and personal stories. We felt really proud that we had our own paper in which we could say what had never been said or shown before.
Feeling more and more sure of ourselves, we asked if we could set up a lesbian drop-in downstairs. Though we were somewhat accepted upstairs, it was made clear that the downstairs space was for heterosexual women. That fight went on for months and it was very painful. Some of our biggest adversaries came out as lesbians months or years later, when it was safer. Finally we won and set up the first Canadian lesbian drop in the spring of 1973. Slowly lesbians started finding their way there.
We were part of other political activities. We supported the Artistic Woodwork strike, and some of us were arrested supporting the immigrant workers. We helped organize International Women’s Day. We wrote about the terrible situation of Indigenous women. We wrote about women’s unpaid work. More women were joining us, coming out, or supporting our work. With renewed confidence, we started planning the first Canadian national lesbian conference at a YWCA in 1974. We were told that women wouldn’t come if we said it was a lesbian conference so we called it the National Gay Women’s Conference. Some women came wearing paper bags on their heads, so they wouldn’t be recognized.
We were feeling really powerful. Four of us started a lesbian feminist communal house, and my lover and I wrote “On a Queer Day We Can See Forever.”
The more rights we won, the safer we felt; the more of us came out, the more we realized how terribly we were treated, both as women and as lesbians. “Lesbians were the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion” as one article said.
We were like the tendril of a plant emerging from the crack in the sidewalk. We were nonconforming because there was no norm for us. We were awkward in ourselves, with each other and like any newborn, very sensitive. We were emerging from centuries of being forced to live hidden lives. We wanted acceptance, and if we couldn’t get it, we would fight until we did. We were fighting our sisters in the women’s movement who saw lesbians as a threat. We were fighting our brothers in the gay movement who were fighting for gay rights but not for women’s rights. We were fighting our families, the laws, and people in the streets, landlords and employers.
The world had never seen women loving women who demanded to be seen, heard, hired, housed and accepted publicly and equally with heterosexuals. We were fighting for fresh air, space and the right to walk proud. We were mad as hell. Was it worth it? Yes—though it was years of a very painful fight to get basic acceptance let alone human rights, and there is still a long way to go.
