As Lesbians are NOT visible in Lesbian visibility week please add news and celebration about lesbians

[IwantToRetire]

I'm not even going to link to the web site that calls itself Lesbian Visibility week as apart from looking like a corporate rip off, how it describes itself means that is celebrating everyone as under their definition anyone can be a lesbian (ie non binary people)

And of course has all the usual suspects promoting it.

Please add anything old or new or a memory that celebrates biological women who are sexually attracted to biological women.

A true story

Nelly and Nadine met in a concentration camp, fell in love, and were then ceberated.

Later on they found each other and shared their live, which became a family secret.

Now a documentary has been made about them
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001lczg

Here is the wonderful memory of the women's cafe in Sheffield that made me so welcome as a newly out homosexual female, women of all ages. Books, herbal teas and really good cake.

Not specifically lesbian but good news for lesbian students.

LGB Alliance is starting a network for lesbian and gay students
https://lgballiance.org.uk/student-network/

The Glass Bar in Euston…and the Candy Bar in Soho…

Oh and the Silver Moon bookshop in Charing Cross Road where I first got brave and bought The Well of Loneliness !!

Big shout out for our lesbian sisters. You're amazing 🤩

Big wave to all the lesbians 👋

My wife and I have just celebrated 12 years together. Gay marriage wasn't legal when we got together, it's good to remember how far we've come.

Also this seems a good place to share the lesbian project website:

www.thelesbianproject.co.uk

Sort of embarressed to list this as the film maker is a man and I suspect if I watched it now I would be more than a little critical.

But for anyone who remembers the 80s (and earlier) it shows that coming out as a lesbian could come with costs.

https://letterboxd.com/film/lianna/

Funny that now the negative reaction to coming out as lesbian will be from the LGBTQI+ community rather than heterosexual men, and the patriarchy that could punish you.

Here's to my lesbian daughter and her lovely girlfriend.

Sorry hit post to soon.

For all the women in and out of the public eye who took slowing over the years I was growing up started to hint at and then talk about being lesbian.

My young mind (and feelings) were challenged and then entranced by them.

😍

I was less brave and educated and bought several really bad lesbian romances, but the first I'd ever read so the quality didn't really matter!

To my remarkable, and lesbian, English teacher from decades ago.

Thinking of all the big sisters who looked out for me when I first came out:

• who taught me about radical feminism even though I was young and stupid, and I laughed off half of what they said as outdated prudery
• who kept extraordinary archives of our herstory when no-one but us wanted to read it, preserving it as crumpled photocopies lying on the kitchen table and pinned to the fridge with magnets
• who founded the London Lesbian Avengers, led us into shenanigans, and showed me the power of standing up and speaking up even when no-one is listening
• who tirelessly supported gay men through the worst of the AIDS crisis, but who never let gay men shout us down or shut us up
• who campaigned for environmental feminism ahead of their time, regardless of mainstream mockery, knowing we all have the same Mother Earth
• who listened patiently to me when I told them about assaults by males, but who were stronger than I had thought any women could be, and who physically protected me when males tried to assault me
• who gave me confidence to love and be brave in a time of section 28, even after I was expelled from school for loving a girl
• who let me be different, and be myself
• and who were there for me no matter what, whether we agreed, whether we disagreed, and whether we had two-hour debates about whether bisexual should be an adjective or a noun - because we knew we needed to stick together

“poor men
they had forgotten
that if you
punch a woman
6 more grow
from the wound”.
Joelle Taylor, "The Battle of Maryville" https://poetryarchive.org/poem/the-battle-of-maryville/

Lovely thread.
When I was a young lesbian, women had their children taken from them if they got into a relationship with a woman, women in the armed forces were jailed and kicked out for being lesbians.

In our more enlightened times, homophobes threaten lesbians and protest wherever they gather in an attempt to intimidate and frighten them. Lesbians are threatened & doxxed online while men claiming to be women coerce lesbians to have sex with them.

Not really sure that much has changed tbh.

Bradford Mela in the 90s. We had a whole tent!!

Sorry - didn't mean to be miserable. Yes to Silver Moon, the Glass Bar, the Drill Hall on a Monday & the First Out cafe - and that's just London.

To my former SIL and her wife, who live next door to a lesbophobic <swear word>.

Oh the Glass Bar! I don't go toThat London often but how I miss it when I'm there!

Just adding JKR's tribute to Allison Bailey last year: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1518542559089512448

This is from Janice Turner's column that just appeared in the Times. I can't do a sharetoken at the moment, so I just copy and paste this bit.

"I’m not a lesbian but I’m happy to help them out when they’re busy. So I was delighted to attend the launch of the Lesbian Project, an initiative by the feminist campaigner Julie Bindel and philosopher Kathleen Stock to ensure the needs of same-sex-attracted women aren’t dissolved in the LGBTQ+ soup.
There were lesbians of all walks of life, from distinguished KCs to composers of musicals, plus a few straight ladies, including JK Rowling, who’ve long admired the bravery and tenacity of lesbians, feminism’s heavy lifters. (And drinkers: it was a loud, hilarious, exuberant night.)
Why is such a project needed? The founders say lesbians are on the front line of gender ideology, pressured to accept biological males into their dating pool. A friend tells me her company celebrated lesbian visibility day by circulating a picture of Eddie Izzard. Lesbians who object are viciously kicked off Pride marches and activists are determined to shut down the Lesbian Project too: 150 picketed its inaugural meeting last month.
The founders also fear for young girls who find themselves attracted to their own sex while rejecting feminine clothes and hair, only to be informed by their peers they must really be boys. More role models are needed, and the room was full of cool, quiffed women in sharp tailoring who you’d want on your side whatever the fight."

I'll celebrate Sarah Waters, one of my favourite writers. Does plot, historical accuracy and electric intimacy like nobody else. New book when Sarah??

Celebrating my lovely cousin, who fell in love with another woman when being in a lesbian relationship got you fired. Now they’re happily married - so good to remember that some things have improved

Martina

London Lesbian and Gay centre in Farringdon as a teenager and lurking outside for hours before being brave enough to go in.

Tracey (who I always thought was called Alex) who I met there and had major crush on.

Dianne, My youth worker some nights and co worker on other nights who was my first real love, who broke my heart, but who still can make my heart flip when I recall her smile.

Chain Reactions and The Clit Club, when there were still safe play clubs for lesbians only.

Venus Rising - multiple rooms of woman enjoying other women.

Fighting against Section 28; going into schools as a teenager and running awareness sessions with staff.

Looking after ‘our gay boys’ as they died.

Jackie, probably the most beautiful, adult and sane woman I was ever lucky enough to be loved by, until I messed it up, broke her heart, and lost the right to have any contact with, my one biggest loss and regret.

Feeling too old and tired to fight anymore but wishing I still had other women in my life rather than being mostly isolated through exhaustion and ill health.

Crying as I write this for all that was and has been lost, including myself it seems now.