Anthony Friedkin, Lesbian Couple, Hollywood, 1972. via Cruising the Archive: Queer Art and Culture in Los Angeles, 1945-1980
Indigo Girls - Power Of Two by IndigoGirlsVEVO
if we ever leave a legacy, it’s that we loved each other well.
TWO DYKES, UGLY BY TRADITIONAL STANDARDS
huddle together after staying death for the day.
The white one whose bigness makes her look soft
holds the head of the beige one
whose drag makes her look hard
They rock each other to stay awake
to stay asleep to stay alive
exchanging softness and hardness
making themselves beautiful and strong
against death every day
Disfigured a little, perhaps,
by the small gun
beating against their mutual breast
A poem from Because Mourning Sickness is a Staple in My Country, which is “a collection of poetry by working-class dykes who have been going through changes and writing poems, among other things.” It was published in 1979 in Iowa City, and you can view the entire thing online here.
I love butch women because no one else would ever have reached into that flannel-clad bundle of inarticulate erotic yearning with a mirror that reflected a sex goddess… I felt my sexual effect for the first time, and grew and grew like Alice in Wonderland drinking her magic potion. I love butch women because it was the synchronicity of butch sexual response that gave me my body… Women who decried being objectified had never had the opportunity to feel like this. They were an emblem of our sexual difference, those panties: We sinned, and shared our secret, together.
“
| — | Carol Queen viaAutostraddle — NSFW Sunday Knows All The Things She Said About Lesbian Sex (via autostraddle) |
Rachel Maddow’s bold high school graduation speech. Preview: she says “condom” and “oligarchy” (in unrelated sentences).
Finding something as awesome as this is why I’m glad Tumblr has returned from the dead today!
Robert Giard, Del Martin and Phyllis Martin (at home in San Fran) 1989
I love Giard - who created a beautiful archive of portraits of gay and lesbian writers in the 80s (see the book Particular Voices) - and these are great subjects (founders of the Daughters of Bilitis)… still, lesbian couple all cozy and domestic is bit… familiar.
Silverman Gallery - Artists - Tammy Rae Carland - Keeping House - The Breakfast Table
The series consists of color photographs that are staged domestic scenes of a girlfriend and Carland conceptualized in the vain of contemporary documentary photography with a strong cinematic influence. These photographs are a detailed investigation of domestic moments; they are an invitation for a public to step into the private space of home, they are an invitation to look. The photographs are meant to evoke ideas of simply being enmeshed in the monotony of everyday life, of being regular, normal and even boring. Keeping House is intended to create a dialogue on the lack of images about gay and lesbian home life and the expectations placed on queer artists to create a sensation or titillating presence.
Fat is a feminist issue, but whose feminism? - The Scavenger
Forget Susie Orbach and her cohorts, whose ideas of fat are based in the pathology of eating disorders and body dysmorphia – it was radical lesbians who fostered the most progressive analyses of fat from a feminist perspective, writes Charlotte Cooper.
I actually like Bordo and Cooper both, but it’s a good article.
Stonewall rioters photographed by Fred MacDarrah outside the offices of the Village Voice on the second or third night of the riots.
They were street kids. They were very young runaways and castaways leaving their families, or thrown out, because they were gay. Many of them were homeless and lived precarious (and sometimes short) lives by hustling, petty thievery, drug dealing, and odd jobs. Others were weekend street kids, kids who led double lives; straight at home and at school, and gay on the weekends in Manhattan. They too sometimes hustled and dealt drugs. As one gay Village resident who knew them said, “They were rotten kids, but they were made rotten.”
…
These were the people who started the Stonewall riots, who launched that first shot across the bow of history for all gays and lesbians.
As can be seen from the photographs, a substantial number of them were black and Latino. A lot of transgenders were involved. Two of them, Sylvia Rivera and Marsh P. Johnson, would emerge as political leaders, founding their own organization, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in the 1970s. Lesbians don’t appear to be much of a presence in the records, which does not mean they weren’t there. It is possible that one lesbian, Marylin Fowler, started the whole thing by ferociously resisting arrest as the cops raided the bar, provoking the crowds into charging the police.
via Counterlight’s Peculiars: Who Rioted at the Stonewall Bar That Night?
Stonewall Riots anniversary time again, the 41st!
I’m getting old enough to be amazed at how much has changed in a short time, historically, rather than frustrated at that change taking so much of our lives, personally. Waves to any queers who’ve faced total pariah status with courage, or are still facing it.
