Lesbian Avengers

Demand your place in the world.1

 

Dedicated to increasing lesbian visibility and raising awareness of lesbian issues, the Lesbian Avengers was founded in 1992 by a group of six New York City-based lesbian activists: Ana Mario Simo, Sarah Schulman, Maxine Wolfe, Anne-christine d’Adesky, Marie Honan, and Anne Maguire). Each of the activists were heavily involved with other gay and lesbian organizations in the city, including ACT UP and ILGO (Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization).2 Ana Maria Simo would also go on to found Dyke TV.

Lesbian Avengers eat fire. Photo Credit: Carolina Kroon, n.d., via Lesbian Avengers website.3
The Lesbian Avengers became well known for their model of direct action which sought to garner as much media attention as possible, eating fire at demonstrations and organizing provocative demonstrations for lesbian visibility, like the DC and New York Dyke Marches. At these Dyke Marches, lesbians would intentionally perform “what many see as deviant behaviors in public,” such as simulating sex acts on a float made to look like a bed,4 to call into question what is public and what is private. By using public space, the Avengers insisted that lesbians have the right to use public space, to be visible, to be out.

Lesbian Avengers poster featuring actress Pam Grier, via Lesbian Avengers website5
Yet, even though the Lesbian Avengers sought to extricate themselves from the white misogyny of the mainstream gay movement, the group nonetheless struggled to meet the needs of lesbians of color. In 1995, lesbians of color protested the annual New York Dyke March.6 The Lesbian Avengers responded by attempting to appeal to lesbians of color through posters like this one, featuring actress Pam Grier, star of many “Blaxploitation” films of the 1970s. Carrie Moyer, the designer of the poster, says she now believes this tactic mostly succeeded in recruiting young white women.7

Though Dyke TV did not identify itself as a project of the Lesbian Avengers, it was often called the “propaganda wing” of the Avengers,8 and its producers set out to address the whiteness of the mainstream lesbian movement. Its On the Road segments showed lesbian life around the country, while its international episode provided glimpses of lesbian life in the Philippines, Yugoslavia, and Thailand, and its Lesbian Health segments focused on the ways lesbians of color were disproportionately affected by certain illnesses. As the world’s first television show by and for lesbians, Dyke TV sought to reflect the diversity of lesbian life, though board meeting notes reveal that Dyke TV also struggled to adequately appeal to lesbians of color to produce for the show.

For its time, Dyke TV was the longest-running piece of gay and lesbian media on television. Though it reproduced some of the problems of mainstream lesbian activism, it also made those problems the focus of its work, encouraging the lesbian community to reflect and improve together. For its 12 years on-air, Dyke TV’s work was deeply linked to the political mission of the Lesbian Avengers: demand a place for your community in the world and, when those spaces do not exist, create your own.


Footnotes:

  1. “What is a Lesbian Avenger?” clip from Dyke TV, Episode 2, 1993, Dyke TV Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Northampton, Massachusetts.
  2. “An Incomplete History…” Lesbian Avengers, http://www.lesbianavengers.com/about/history.shtml.
  3. “Lesbian Avengers eat fire,” Carolina Kroon, n.d., Lesbian Avengers, http://www.lesbianavengers.com/about.shtml.
  4. Elizabeth Currans, “Enacting Spiritual Connection and Performing Deviance,” in Marching Dykes, Liberated Sluts, and Concerned Mothers: Women Transforming Public Space, (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2017), pp. 41 – 57, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1w6tds2.
  5. “We Recruit with Pam Grier,” Carrie Moyer, c. 1993, Lesbian Avengers, http://www.lesbianavengers.com/images/moyer_design.shtml.
  6. Currans, “Enacting Spiritual Connection,” 46.
  7. “We Recruit,” Carrie Moyer, c. 1993.
  8. “Mary Patierno, Mary Patierno Interview Transcript,” Nov. 26, 2016, Lesbian Herstory Archives AudioVisual Collection, Dyke TV, Lesbian Herstory Archives, New York, New York, http://herstories.prattinfoschool.nyc/omeka/exhibits/show/dyke-tv/item/843.