June is designated as a month of acceptance that welcomes diversity in communities regardless of sexual orientation and gender presentation. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer+ groups celebrate this special time with Pride parades, picnics, parties, memorials for those lost from HIV and AIDS, and other group events that annually attract thousands upon thousands of individuals.
This year’s celebration and recognition of LGBTQ+ Pride Month has also become a more emphatic and dramatic call for unity by people facing threats, persecution and death.
In 2023, over 491 anti-LGBTQ+ laws have been proposed by state legislatures throughout the country with over 10% of them becoming law. Nearly 1 in 5 of any type of hate crime is now motivated by anti-LGBTQ+ bias.
LGBTQ+ Pride Month will continue to be celebrated in definance of this ugly bullying backlash, but most importantly it will be celebrated to recognize everone’s rights as citizens to fully participate in American society.
LGBTQ+ Pride refers to a worldwide movement and philosophy asserting that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals should be proud of their sexual orientation and gender identity, with Gay Pride advocates working for equal rights and treatment for all LGBTQ+ people.
Honoring Women Who Loved Women
Recognizing and honoring women of the LGBTQ community is all the more important because their real stories often had to be hidden or distorted. Please see Gerda Lerner’s comments about Lesbian invisibility below.
Top row (l-r): Pauli Murray, civil rights and women’s rights activist, lawyer, author and priest Arden Eversmeyer, founder of the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project Harmony Hammond, artist, author and pioneer of the feminst art movement Crystal Jang, co-founder of the Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women and Transgender Community Achebe Powell, educator and organizer, founder of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice Brenda Howard, bisexual rights activist who is often referred to as the “Mother of Pride” Audre Lorde, poet, author, feminist and civil rights activist
Center row (l-r): Roma Guy, LGBT and women’s rights activist Nadine Smith, LGBT activist and executive director of Equality Florida Beth Brant, poet and author whose work focused on her identity as a Mohawk and a lesbian Andrea Jenkins, poet, artist and the first Black openly transgender woman elected to public office in the US Gloria E. Anzaldua, scholar of Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory and queer theory Blair Imani, queer African-American Muslim author and activist Joan Nestle, writer, editor and a founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives
Bottom row (l-r): Marsha P. Johnson, gay liberation activist, pioneering trans activist and advocate for homeless LGBTQ youth Margaret Chung, the first known Chinese-American woman physician Sally Ride, astronaut and physicist, the first American woman in space Sharice Davids, lawyer and politician, the first openly LGBT Native American elected to the U.S. Congress Billie Jean King, former professional tennis player, pioneer for gender equality and social justice Sylvia Rivera, Latina American gay liberation and transgender rights activist Jane Addams, suffragist, settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist and public administrator
The Invisibility of Lesbians in American History by Gerda Lerner
This excerpt is from Living with History/Making Social Change by historian, author and pioneer in the field of women’s history Gerda Lerner, a 2002 NWHA Honoree.
“Researchers in women’s history often have to depend on autobiographical writing – diaries, letters, memoirs, and fiction – to piece together the life stories of women of the past. . . Self-descriptive narratives of women abound in omission and disguises. . . . A subset of autobiographies and biographies concerns women who had special friendships with other women prior to the period when lesbian relationships were defined.
Invisibility is the number one form of bias because it creates
and sustains stereotypes and other disinformation.
“Were modern historians justified in defining such friendships as lesbian relationships? Were they reading modern interpretations into the past record? The subject was mostly discussed and written about by lesbian historians, while heterosexual historians, coming upon ample evidence of such special friendships, gingerly danced around them.
Among the many prominent nineteenth-century women who had lifelong stable relationships with other women, which involved shared home-making, shared finances, and often shared organizational responsibilities, were Jane Addams, Frances Willard, and M. Carey Thomas. What kind of ‘evidence’ did one need to define the relationship as lesbian? Were such relationships lesbian if one could not prove sexual aspects? Heterosexual authors often chose to ignore such relationships or to refer to them simply as ‘friendships,’ allowing the reader to draw her/his own conclusions.
I urged historians to report honestly on what their sources told them about these relationships, without necessarily being able to report on how the participants or their contemporaries defined such relationships.”
Other sources: To Believe in Women, by Lillian Faderman, is a landmark book about lesbian history in the late nineteenth and twentieth century. Unfortunately it is no longer available from our distributors, but it is offered through Bookshop HERE, and Amazon HERE.
