Women and History

Coming out at 50

2009-05-22T16:40:00.000-07:00

I so envy young people today who are coming out at younger ages all the time. I am 65 and when I was growing up I didn't even know that there was such a thing as gay people. It was just not talked about. I had crushes on older girls and teachers when I was in high school but had no idea what that meant. I was not particularly attracted to boys but felt like I needed to have a boyfriend to be "popular" with the girls. I just assumed getting married was the thing to do so I got married right out of college. My mother tried to talk me out of it. I sometimes think she might have been a "sister" but she died before I came out so I will never know. I knew almost right away that I had made a terrible mistake but stayed with him for 8 years and had a daughter.

When I finally got a divorce I was pretty sure then that I was a lesbian but had no idea how to meet other lesbians. Some women I was working with at Washington University told me about a women's festival at Cuivre River State Park so I went up there with my 3 year old daughter. I didn't really know anyone there and no one really talked to me. I often think if someone had befriended me there I would have come out much earlier. I was painfully shy at that time as I had been constantly berated by my husband. I did pick up one of the first issues of Lesbian Connection and subscribed so I was reading it for years before I actually came out. I spent many years mainly raising my daughter and half-heartedly dating men.

When I was 50 and my daughter was away at college I decided to try and do something about coming out. At that time they had personal ads in the Gay News Telegraph and I met some women that way. Some are still friends today. Around that time I went to my first Charis concert at COCA. I had been asked to go by my straight boss who sang in another chorus. After the concert I stuck around as there was a dance and that was my first experience at a women's dance. Unfortunately the only person I knew and talked to was a straight woman, Jane Clark, as she had been my parents' minister at one time. There was a lesbian dinner group advertised in the gay paper and you called a number to find out where it was. I called several times but couldn't get the nerve up to go. I used to drive down on Manchester and look at Attitudes but it looked too scary to go in. I finally got the nerve to go to the dinner group and it was there I met my first girlfriend. She was very much into the community so through her I met lots of lesbians. She took me to the National Women's Music Festival and the Michigan Music Festival, both of which I had read about for years in Lesbian Connection. We went together for about 2 years and broke up mutually and are still friends today. Shortly after that I met my 2nd girlfriend Kathy who I was with for 7 years and who died of breast cancer 5 years ago. Since then I have been single. I sang in Charis for a while. I am one of the founding members of Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC) St. Louis chapter and of SAGE Metro St. Louis. I have never regretted coming out because I knew that I had finally found myself and who I was meant to be.

Oh, and by the way, when I came out to my daughter when she came home from college she wasn't upset at all. I tried to soften it by suggesting I might be bisexual and she said "Why don't you just say it that you are a lesbian?"

Janelle Speaks

2008-10-21T03:11:00.000-07:00

I was a little startled to the amount of histories pouring forth from people on this list. I had been thinking of how so many young lesbians find these stories had to believe and cannot quite comprehend how closeted we all were growing up. I am alo aware that the generation of lesbian before us almost now never have opportunites to tell their stories. These lesbians are difficult to track down even. i would love to see asn oral history project that coaxed them to tell their stories.

My story of coming out has one small but important difference-I know the word lesbian" by age 12 or so. I lived in small towns usually but my father was an Episcopal minister and he and my mother wanted us to understand the world we lived in and define it. So I was taught these words and what they meant and introduced to people who were Black-Negro was the word in those days and the word was carefully enumciated. however I was still deep in the closet. I was taught the word lesbian but I was also taught that nice people were not lesbian, taught that very firmly. I should have known when I was 12 when I became attracted to a classmate. I spent all four years of high school in a boarding school in Salt Lake City. There were rumours about a couple of the teachers but I ignored them. I didn't want to be lesbian. I fell in love any number of times there, still remember some of those women with deep fondness but I was damned careful never to let myself understand why. That would have spoiled my sense of pleasure. This boarding school was a church school and I should not be surprised that I ended up in Northwest Nazarene in
Nampa but I still shake my head over it. I was in my third year of college when one day my feelings for a classmate became too specific and too physical anymore for me to ignore the truth about myself. I was horrified. At that minute all I could think of was that I was going to get this degree and get a good job and find the best Psychistrist I could and get rid of whatever I was feeling.

However I struggled job wise after graduation and spent a couple of years in Twin Falls, where my best friends were a lesbian couple-not that I knew that. I was willfully blind. However there were long discusssions of homosexuality at work. When I moved to Boise, I found myself in love with an incredible woman, a woman who at age 84 who is still to me one of the most sensual people I know. "Age cannot stale or custom wither...." Byron I believe. i figured that if I could fall in love with someone of her caliber, this love could not be too bad. So I set out to find what there was of the Lesbian community in Boise. Boise was quite closeted at that time. Lesbians stayed closed groups, people divided themselves into "butch" and "femme", and there was a lot of discussion when I appeared as to whether or not I was really lesbian. Plus no one read books and everyone but me drank copious amount of beer-I cannot to this day tolerate the taste of beer. I was getting a couple of lesbian publications from faraway cities(Anyone else remember the first lesbian publication out of Boston-one of the editors had fled eastern Idaho?) most lesbians I met them thought I was dangerously radical. I was horrified and pretty well cut of all ties with the lesbian community as I found it then. As members of a minority, we can be judgemental of one another.

I was a member of the Unitarian Universalist church which prides itself on being radical. So I concentratd on slowly but surely coming out there and at work. As a person i was much more accepted by these two groups. At church, no one thought it a problem if I taught RE{sunday school} which I knew would utterly horrify the lesbian women I first met. Then a straight friend asked me if the reason i had no lesbian friends was because none of them were feminists and I said yes. Two days later she brought 4 bright, open women, lesbians who had inquiring minds who had not been terrified into closets and into role playing, down into my basement apartment. I was in seventh heaven. We formed one of the first lesbian organizarions there.

This was maybe the winter of 74-75. I had graduated from high school in 1966 and college in 1970. i found my first Feminist book in a grocery store in Twin Falls and my first lesbian one in some back heap in Salt Lake City. That first novel was a retelling someone wrote of the infamous Anne Perry story, of her and her lover when they were 15 and 16. It was well after i met the first Lesbian feminists in Boise that someone lent me the novel by Radcliffe Hall I had been hearing about. ASt that time too I found the Price of Salt in a used bookstore along with the Ann Barron books.

So I knew the word lesbian at an early age but let me tell you all, knowing did not keep from being very, very much in denial for years.

If Lovin’ You is Wrong

2008-10-18T03:37:00.000-07:00

by Lee Lawton

I remember the first time I went to a gay bar. It was in 1972, and I went with two friends. We did quite a lot of research first, because not one of us had ever been to a gay bar before.

I was 24, Sharon was 36, and Joan was 41. Sharon and Joan had been together for about 6 years. I met Sharon at work.

When I met Sharon and later her partner Joan, they were just beginning to identify as being lesbian. I didn’t have a clue. I’d been living with a girlfriend for 5 years, and four of them had been sexual. It was the first time either of us had ever had sex, and we just made it up as we went along. We thought we had a special friendship, and that someday we’d each meet a nice guy and then get married. I’d never ever heard of the word lesbian until one evening when Sharon and Joan came over for dinner, and we drank a lot of beer, and Sharon said that she wondered if Mary and I were lesbian. Lesbian, thespian, we didn’t know the difference! So, Sharon and Joan began talk about what lesbians were. They were about a half step ahead of us then.

Joan was a great researcher. She got hold of some magazines from San Francisco, and then she somehow found out about The Habit, a tiny little bar on 7th Street in Phoenix, Arizona. Each of us drove by it a couple of times before we dared to go inside. Next door, was an indoor plant store. The entrance was small, and kind of run down. We decided we’d go and see what it was like.

We first went to the Habit on a weekday evening. We went at some ridiculously early hour, like 7:00 p.m. I’ll never forget the first person I saw in there. She was sitting at the corner of the L-shaped bar. I say “she”, but we really didn’t know whether she was a she or not, the first time we saw her. She was tall and slim, had short, dark hair. Her hard pack of Marlboros lay on the bar next to her Bud draft. It was still daylight outside, just dusk, when we opened the door and walked into the dim interior, mostly lit by neon lights behind the bar. She watched us as we walked by, trying to act like we did this every day. We sat on stools and ordered, and glanced at her out of the corners of our eyes. She was the only other person sitting at the bar. We didn’t stare or anything, but we did notice that she had a moustache. Maybe this wasn’t really a lesbian bar, after all!

That was the first of probably hundreds of visits to the Habit. The bar part of the place was rather small, with the L-shaped bar, and a few tables. There was another room, with the juke box, a small stage, a pool table, some tables and chairs, and a dance floor. The whole place was dim, and reeked of old booze and cigarette smoke. It was owned by an older, heterosexual couple, named Andy and Lucy. That couple was like parents to about half of the lesbian population of Phoenix, as we were to find out over the next few years. They were kind, generous, and looked out for us when the cops came to raid the place, as they did almost every weekend.

The weekend after our reconnaissance visit, we went back again on a Saturday night. The same mustached woman was sitting on the corner barstool. She smiled at us, said hello, and went back to sipping her beer. We felt like old hands, then, and when we sat at the bar, we sat with our backs to it, like everybody else sitting at the bar, looking out over the dance floor, and at all the lesbians strolling by, sitting at tables talking, couples slow dancing, and choosing songs on the jukebox, arms over each other’s shoulders. Women kissing each other—the first time any of us had ever seen that in “public”. I can’t begin to tell you how thrilling that was!

The favorite song that year seemed to be If Lovin’ You is Wrong, I Don’t Wanna Be Right. It was made just for us.

Vicky's story

2008-10-16T17:55:00.000-07:00

I was born in Texas in 1952 to an alcoholic father and manic depressive mother. I remember feeling very different as a child. It wasn’t that I was a tomboy. I was very feminine, but also asthmatic and sickly, uncoordinated, into books and school, and generally a social misfit.

I muddled up generally trying to do what I was “sposed to” do. That included getting good grades, going to the University and getting my teaching degree. It included marrying a man and trying to make a go of it. The marriage failed because we were both from alcoholic families and had no idea what we were doing. I was totally unaware of my sexual orientation, only vaguely aware that such a thing even existed.

I did have close, intense friendships with women. And eventually I figured out what a lesbian was. When friends would confront me and ask when I was going to come out, I would answer, “I want to be a mother and I’m a teacher. I can’t be a lesbian.” And I went on to be a teacher and a mother.

But then came Karen. She moved in next to my second husband and I. She was a fireball of energy and we became best friends. We did everything together: gardening, playing with our kids, cooking, and endless, endless talking. Karen was a recovering alcoholic and we talked about our histories and our dysfunctional families. A week after my husband left, we were sitting together after the children were in bed. Karen turned to me and said, “You know, there’s a lot of sexual energy in this room.” I could ignore it no longer, and I didn’t want to. We tried to change our relationship from friends to lovers, but she felt she would be “struck drunk” for being a lesbian. She just couldn’t do it. After a painful period of readjustment, we became friends again and stayed so until she died 14 years later.

I did become a teacher and spent 27 years in the public school systems. . I was reasonably out as a teacher. The junior high kids knew who I was although I could never confirm it verbally. I wrote lesbian poetry and articles about recovering from sexual abuse under an assumed name. That kept the districts happy. When NCLB forced me out of the classroom, I assumed the name legally. There was no longer anyone to protect: not my parents, not my children, not my career.

Seven years after my divorce, my ex husband decided to sue for the custody of the children. He was remarrying. His wife couldn’t have kids of her own. He won custody of the younger, his child. My older child became out of control during that time period, involved with drugs, alcohol and stealing. I couldn’t keep enough of an eye on him to keep him safe and eventually sent him to be with his brother. It was by far the hardest time of my life.
As a young adult Kwanza called me to make amends. I had just gotten off the phone with a parent who was equally distraught over their child’s behavior. I asked Kwanza if there was anything that a parent could do. His reply is one I will never forget. “Moma, when a child makes a decision like I did, the only thing you can do is feel sorry for the parent.”

Our relationship has been uneven since. Kwanza married a woman who decided she could not stand to be in my presence. I have not seen my grandbaby, his child, since his first week of life. I do not know if homophobia is any part of that. She won’t talk to me except to tell me I am despicable. I do know that the nurses were chiding her to let her parents know she was okay the day after the baby’s birth. I miss Kwanza and I miss having a grandbaby I can hold.

I do have a great relationship with my younger son, who is engaged to my best friends’ daughter. Yes, she is the child of a lesbian couple. Will and Dana reassure me that when, and if, they have children those grandbabies will be a part of my life.

Throughout this time, I had several relationships, always feeling vaguely guilty that I couldn’t maintain anything longer than 2-5 years. After the kids were gone I did have a partnership that lasted 8 years. I thoroughly enjoyed her and was sorry when we had to part ways. However during the whole time she was never very comfortable being out, certainly never demonstrative outside the house, and rarely in. We lived in Idaho and I wondered if that was a part of it. But we eventually moved back to her home in Hawaii and it didn’t change.

I never got the white picket fence and raised children with a partner the way I dreamed. But I have had wonderful experiences, loving friends, and two careers so far. Has my life been affected by homophobia? Certainly. It’s also been affected by many other things. Would my life had been different if I had lived in different times? Absolutely. We are all part of our culture and history. All in all I don’t regret anything I’ve done. It’s been a good life and there is much more yet to come.

Susan Mayo,bio.

2008-10-15T08:20:00.000-07:00

Susan Mayo’s Biography

My name is Susan Mayo and I was born in Los Angles California on July 12, 1945 to Alfred M. and Evelyn Mayo, he an engineer for Douglas Aircraft and she a stay at home mom. Married for almost eight years before I was born, my parents were well settled in their childless routine when I came along. My father particularly had had a very difficult relationship with his mother and he really liked that Evelyn devoted her total attention to him. With my birth, all of that changed and I suspect the honeymoon was over for both of my folks. I was a very active and inquisitive child, walking before I was six months old and talking very early as well. My poor mother (who did such things as bleach all of our floors so that I would not be exposed to germs) did not know what to do with a daughter who when put outside in a play pen would first crawl out over the top, and then proceed to dig up and eat sow bugs. Mother had saved pennies to prepare for her dream child and she wanted nothing more than to dress me in ribbons and bows and show me off. I had other ideas. When we would go out, mom would dress me and put me in whatever container she thought would hold me while she ran in and dressed herself. By the time she would be dressed, I would be out of my confines and stark naked running first around the house, and as soon as I learned how to unlock doors, up and down the street in the neighborhood. I really feel sorry for my mom as she was totally unequipped to deal with a child like me. I still have echos in my mind of her shrieking “all I ever wanted was a little girl I could dress up and LOOK WHAT I GOT!!!”. I was the bane of her existence until the day of her death and she would tell anyone who would listen how it was because I was such an awful child that she had a myriad of illnesses that she enjoyed mightily until her death at age 87. My earliest recollections are of my mother telling me how I was killing her because I was such a willful, boyish child!

My father was a genius who spent the majority of his time inventing things and he was not interested in kids. Actually, he resented the fact that he no longer had my mother’s undivided attention and he was therefore largely absent in my memories. I remember being glad that he was gone most of the week and I didn’t like it when he was around the house on weekends. After I grew up I realized that my dad was a seriously intelligent man who did such things as design the Mercury Capsule, but as a child, I felt that he was an unnecessary obstruction and I really felt that he was totally indifferent to me and later to my brother as well. I was almost 40 years old before I seriously considered the fact that he probably did care for me in his own way when he helped me to get this farm started by designing my barn using the materials available.

From the time I can first remember which I was told was at about age 2, I knew that I could not relate to men emotionally. Of course I had no word for it, but I knew I was different and when asked if I was going to grow up and have kids I would always should NO! I seemed to realize from the beginning that I would have to take care of myself, so I taught myself very early on how to get what I wanted by doing jobs of all kinds.

My folks took me to Griffith Park one Sunday afternoon when I was about 6 months old and put me on a pony. That was the beginning of what has been my lifelong passion. I was never one to cry for any reason, but when they tried to take me off the pony, I screamed and had a total tantrum. Recognizing that this perhaps would be one way to control me, my folks were quick to latch on to riding as a way to make me do what they wanted me to do. If I wouldn’t wear a dress, I didn’t get to go riding. If I insisted on going to the neighbors asking for jobs, I didn’t get to go riding. Later on whenever I frustrated my mother in any way and for any reason, the threat that if I wasn’t whatever it was she wanted me to be at that moment, she would sell my horse. My horse was the only thing in the world that mattered to me, and I did believe her and that made me miserable much of my childhood. The things that I did that frustrated her were not things like dishonesty, or lying or cheating, but things I had no control over like not being feminine, running too much, not wanting to come in and spend time with her, and so on.

Perhaps it was because I was so engrossed with the horses that I did not seek out information, or perhaps it was because you just didn’t hear much about “homosexuality” back then, but I did not have a word for what I knew I was until I was about 16. I met a woman who was 45 and to me very glamorous indeed. She was a psychiatric nurse who had served as an Army nurse in WW2 and she was also an artist. She drove a TR3 and I fell head over heels in love with her. I was working at the Horseman’s Mart when Pat first came in. She had purchased a horse and had not a clue what she needed to buy for him, so I offered to go with her to meet her horse and help her figure out what it was she needed. She was not a rider and the horse she had purchased was not a beginners horse, so she hired me to train the horse for her and to give her lessons on riding him. We met a couple of times a week at the barn and slowly I became aware that this was the woman I wanted! This did not sit well with Pat. She was 45, she lived with her cousin (also a lesbian, but totally closeted) who was a physician, and she would have no more seduced a 16 year old than she would have gone out and shot someone. I was totally the aggressor and it took me almost two years to get her to even consider a relationship with me. When finally we did become lovers, she was unable to be physical unless she was about half drunk, and she never ever admitted that we were “lesbians”! She would say that we loved each other, but we were NOT homosexuals. That really played a number on my head because I didn’t care one whit what you called it, I knew that I loved her and wanted her to verbally acknowledge our relationship. Never did happen. She is now 87 and still one of my dearest friends, and she STILL blushes and is horrified when I remind her of our ancient love. During this period I did discover gay bars and met quite a few lesbians, but back then (in the early sixties) those lesbians that you met at bars were generally butch/femme and of different type of person than I was comfortable with. They were hard drinking hard fighting women who seemed hell bent at mimicking the heterosexual experience, which never really made any sense to me. I couldn’t relate to men, I sure didn’t want to relate to a woman who was trying to act like a man. I was told I was totally butch, but I never wanted to be a man, and I never wanted to act like one. It is funny, I have a transgendered second cousin who asked me once why I did not have a sex change. I told him I didn’t particularly like men, I sure as hell didn’t want to be one! I told him I was much happier being a very strong and able woman and had no need to be a phony man.

During the years I was discovering the name for my sexuality and some things about it, my mother cottoned on to the fact that there was more to me than just being a tom-boy. She threatened to send me to a mental institution if I did not quit being “like that”! Again, I believed her, and I also knew that it was very dangerous to Pat if mother ever figured that one out, so at age 17 I told my folks to take their college fund and stick it where the sun didn’t shine, and I moved out of their house never to spend another night there forever. I worked many jobs between 17 and 21 saving money to go to school, and building my own group of friends and family. When I was 21 and no longer able to be harmed by my folks I made a date to see them and told them about myself and said that if they could not accept it and be nice about it I would never see them again. Things were kindof rough for awhile, but they came around and from about age 25 on they were fairly supportive of my life and my endeavors. They did help me many times with such things as putting on horse shows, showing my horses, and as I mentioned earlier, designing things for this farm. The barn that stands on my farm today was built by my father and I using materials I took down from a leased barn and moved up here to the new land. While I never did really trust my folks, we did end up with a pretty good relationship and I do know that they did the best they could do given the times they were raised in.

It took me eight years to finally decide that Pat was never going to accept our relationship without agonizing over it, so I reluctantly ended it. I was in college, and had horses that needed to be taken care of, and in general was way too busy to concentrate on having a love life. I became a teacher so that I would have enough time to do my horses and also because I knew I was good at it and enjoyed it. In 1969 I graduated from college with a teaching certificate and began looking for a job. I was aware of the fact that Texas in the late sixties was not a liberal place, however I was never able to do anything to disguise myself and I was constantly aware that there was a possibility that at any given point I could loose my career if my homosexuality caught the attention of the wrong people. Nonetheless, while not outwardly advertising it at school, I never denied it or tried to hide it. I had a brief relationship with a Englishwoman who was a lawyer (she is still one of my dear friends), and then I met what was to become my nemesis.

I was at a party and a redheaded spitfire who turned on the charm and set her sights on me. I was totally unaccustomed to the “lesbian scene” and had no idea that she was a notorious “bad girl” who jumped from woman to woman leaving havoc in her wake. We got together in 1973 and were together until 1981. I am very honest, and I don’t look for people to be doing things that I wouldn’t be doing, so I did not realize that she was bagging every gay teacher in the district, as well as trying to get her hooks into various of my riding students (and their mothers). This situation almost undid me forever because I was so totally unaware and trusted her. Even after I discovered her duplicities and confronted her with them, she proclaimed everlasting love and declared that the other things were “just sex” and did not matter at all. She would not leave. I had to take all of her possessions and put them on two flatbed trailer and park them out on the interstate in order to get rid of her. Even at that, for ten years I would periodically awake to her presence in my bedroom or my classroom, or at a horse show. She just about killed me. By the time I finally got totally rid of her I weighed about 110 pounds (which is not much when you are over six feet tall), and I was sure I would never let anyone close enough to hurt me again.

The eighties were about building my current farm and becoming established as a recognized breeder of fine Asil Arabians. I worked non stop and had no social life aside from the company of riding students and a very few lesbian friends who were also involved with the horses. For years I had no personal life at all and had no desire for one. In 1986 one of my friends brought one of her friends out to the farm and I met Cyann. Cyann loved horses, was a rider, and became a student and a friend. She became part of the Susar Family, helping with shows and in general being a part of the rather huge effort that this farm is. In 1987 we realized that we cared deeply for each other and Cyann sold her home and moved out to the farm. That was almost 21 years ago and we are still doing the farm, loving each other and our animals, and enjoying growing old together. My only regret is that I did not meet Cyann until I was in my forties.

2008-10-14T15:16:00.000-07:00

I was in my early 20s when I fell in love with a woman but it was several years later that I accepted that I was a lesbian. When an undergraduate I majored in history and political science. One of my political science teachers asked me to stay and teach Texas government. I decided not to do that. But if I had I might have taken the path of being a lawyer which what I wish now I had done. I was standing in the graduation line when a friend said her grandmother was driving her to Bolder, Colorado in a few days and did I want to go with them. I said yes and did go. I lived in a house with about 6 other women. They were quite religious and against being gay. This was troubling to me so I went to see a counselor at the University of Colorado counseling center. I told her I loved women. She laughed at me. I left and never went back. I came back to Texas and got a master's degree in clinical psychology. One of the professors was quite taken with me and my work and helped me get a job with a clinical psychologist in Dallas. After a few years there I left because she ran out of money to pay us. I went to Baltimore, MD. and worked in the county school system as a psychologist. After a year there, I came back to Texas and got a job with the Dallas Juvenile Department as a probation officer. There I met a parole officer and we got involved but she ended up lying to me about an affair but I found love letters between the two. I left and said I would never let anyone hurt me like that again. I was naive about relationships and had no idea that this kind of thing happened. I met another woman visiting a friend in Dallas. She lived in San Diego. I had already decided I wanted to go into social work so I applied to a new school in San Diego and moved in with this woman. After I got the degree, we both moved to Dallas. I knew I wanted to be a college teacher and would need a Ph.D. to do this so the next year I applied to Ph.D. program. I ended up going to Ohio State because I was offered the best financial package there. I left after my course work and qualifying exams and got a job in the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Arlington. I am still there. I have been in various relationships with women and have not had much success in long term relationships. The longest were two 5-year relationships. I have dedicated the rest of my career to lesbian and gay persons and am writing my 5th book on them. Other books I have written were on midlife. My current book that I in the process of writing is on lesbian and gay couples. I have another book proposal out but no word on its success. It is on a book I really want to write and will most likely be my last book. The topic is what conservative religion does to lesbian and gay persons and to the practitioners who will not work with them. I have made several presentations on this topic and they have gone over well. ski

Women in History

2008-10-14T12:49:00.000-07:00

Throughout history the women and their contributions have been ignored. Often not even named. As we are more and more recognized and noted, we demand the right to speak as we please and share our individual histories with you as a way of helping youngsters (and those women maybe not so young) know their sexuality, be comfortable with it, and embrace it, no matter what it might be.
We make these personal histories available in hopes that all people will know that we exist, that we contribute, that we live and love and refuse to hide in the shadows. We are queer women. We suffered through times when being queer was enough to send us to jail, get us fired from jobs, cause us to be deemed as perverts and lepers, to deny us civil rights. Although we have made much progress, we still fight for equality, as women and as lesbians. To that end, we share our past struggles, so younger women can continue the fight with the strength and resolve that we did.