What happened to the Dyke March in San Francisco?
One woman's description of what happened to her community
You may have heard that the Dyke March in San Francisco was canceled just a few days ago. This seems unbelievable in light of the enormous amount of money and attention given to PRIDE events around the western world. If you have been paying attention, lesbians are being erased by trans identities, medicalization, drag queens, gay men, QUEER theory, and Judith Butler herself. To give a brief history of the issues, please read one lesbian’s experience of the Dyke March and the erasure of lesbian only spaces.
If you think of the Dyke March as a host, and then you think of all of the pests that feed off of this host, you get an idea. For instance, first it was an amazing female, lesbian only space. The energy was stunning, we got to see our exes, our friends, and women from across the world (or our own hometowns) who came just for this event.
Next, "allies" came to the Dyke March along with the dykes.
Soon, women started getting radical mastectomies and taking testosterone and showing up at the Dyke March. They said they were still dykes. However, they were bare-chested, full of aggression, and did things like slide down muddy hills and scream and yell and beat their scarred chests. All of this in Dolores Park at the Dyke March. While the rest of us were sitting on blankets drinking and catching up with each other.
Next, the males pretending to be women came to the Dyke March.
In the midst of all this, there was a small group of women who were running the Dyke March every year. Strictly volunteer. At some point it became more commercialized and there was a stage set up and more security maybe and other accoutrement. But the Dyke March was always just about dykes getting together and taking space for one day of the year. Now, we had dykes, allies, especially male allies, and then we had women pretending to be males growing beards and having no breasts anymore, and then we had males pretending to be women saying they were dykes. You could see how this might feel like a blood sucking thing for the lesbians who started all of this. At this point these organized lesbians are probably in their 60s and tired or ill or apparently some have died. it's a microcosm of what it's like to be a lesbian now. Any spaces we had are gone.
I think there will be a lot of lesbians that show up at Dolores Park today. There will probably also be males pretending to be women who show up because they don't know it's been canceled.
A small contingent of us from San Francisco Terf Central who are lesbians will be there today. We hope to hand out some cards, maybe make some friends, and propose that the Dyke March continue next year as a women only event.
Know the history from having lived it. Indulge my memories. I moved to SF in the late seventies from Ann Arbor, hotbed of lesbian separatism. (Should have stayed separate. Men/gay men have never become dependable allies.) There was a *special reading room* at the Univ of Mich library for books on "homosexuality." I had to send away to England for a copy of The Well of Loneliness. Back then we were united as "homosexuals" - male and female, gays and lesbians. Bisexuals were on the fringe. There were male "transvestites" in gay bars and at PRIDEs. Lesbians were feminists and gay men were not really. Women's Studies was created and included lesbians. Judith Butler had not written incomprehensible "gender" gibberish, nor fantasized "gender studies." "Queer" was a pejorative and "straights" were not claiming they were "queer." People were not identifying as "non-binary" since Orwellian genderspeak did not even exist to claim such an identity. No one was "transgender" since that also did not exist. Renee Richards was called a "transexual." SF PRIDE in the early days began with "dykes on bikes" leading. I did once ride in SF Pride on my 650cc Honda with my gay pal as my passenger. We were young, it was indeed "pride," so liberating joining as "homosexuals" coming out of the closet. I never liked the "dykes on bikes" thing ("male energy") and thought the bikes should have been bicycles. I was a marathon runner. Men/gays did not create groups like "men against rape" while women/lesbians joined in the fight against AIDS. "It was hard to be a lesbian [last century!]...years ago ; now [women and lesbians need to find "new pride" and value themselves as women - adult human females.
It’s not just lesbian erasure - it’s female erasure and it’s a sad commentary on how society fails to value women. Thank you for the article - I am glad that you will be at the park to remind those women there that they are valued as women and don’t need to give into the pressure to mar their bodies for the sake of escaping themselves.