Category: Art
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1993: Sundays at Café Tabac, THAT Vanity Fair cover, Melissa Etheridge coming out… and my birth.
1993. It’s a “pivotal year in lesbian activism,” remembers Wanda Acosta, who co-hosted a weekly lesbian-focused event called No Day Like Sunday at Café Tabac. “[1993] included the first Dyke March, The Lesbian Avengers, LGBTQ March on Washington, as well as lesbian visibility in the arts, music, film and media.” “We saw the Vanity Fair…
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Anne Lister takes ballet in new staging of Gentleman Jack
Anne Lister is not a ghost from lesbian history; her decoded diaries paint a palpably formidable figure known as the first documented modern lesbian. Her presence in the past is in tension with the societal expectations of 19th-century women–she was able to see past double-standards to forge a path she could be excited about. Anne…
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Stories That Made Lesbian Herstory in 2025
2025 is officially done and dusted. What made lesbian herstory? Sport: Entertainment: Puttin’ rings on it: Controversial news:
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“Culturally Gay”: Are lesbians allowed to discuss popular culture?
I was a teenager when weekly celebrity gossip magazines were calling women who weighed 60kg “obese.” How quickly (or slowly) a celebrity woman could lose her pregnancy weight made headlines. Kate Moss proudly declared that her motto was, “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” You couldn’t escape it. Celebrity culture and the magazines that…
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Is Taylor Swift secretly a lesbian?
I don’t particularly care for Taylor Swift. I don’t mean this in an edgy, “ugh, Swifties are so annoying and lame,” way. She has some catchy songs. She’s a very skilled businesswoman. She remains apolitical enough, quiet enough, behaved enough, white enough and bland enough to appeal to a very wide demographic. She’s safe. She’s…
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Betty “Who?”: Lesbian and gay solidarity is back, baby!
As someone who has spent a lot of time and energy in feminist spaces, it never fails to amaze me when non-lesbian women try to draw a wedge between lesbians and gay men. But never being attracted to the reproductive sex you’re “supposed to be,” in a world where producing offspring is upheld as humanity’s…
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The JoJo Siwa Saga: When lesbianism is denied a definition
I want to preface the recent news on JoJo Siwa by saying that if a woman genuinely thought she was a lesbian – because she’d never been attracted to a male before – only to come out as bisexual (or “queer” as JoJo did), once she discovers she actually is attracted to men, then whatever.…
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I was there: Canada’s Stonewall, the Brunswick Four
Women had fewer choices in 1974. We were excluded from the “trades” where you could actually make a decent wage. We couldn’t get bank loans to start businesses without a man’s signature. The courts were taking children away from their mothers because their mothers were lesbians… It wasn’t good, and we were making a fuss.…
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Heard of the male gaze? Get ready for the lesbian lens with Halie Torris
How does a lesbian artist express lesbian sexuality in her work when lesbian desire is usually either ignored, denied, purified or assumed to be created for men? Halie Torris’ art appeals to the legions of lesbians craving sexy depictions of ourselves through a lesbian lens. Halie Torris is a lesbian figurative painter who channels emotion…
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‘I Kissed a Girl’ is better than ‘The Ultimatum: Queer Love’
What do you think of when you read the words “I kissed a girl”? I hope it’s not the song by Katy Perry from 2008, where the singer portrays female same-sex desire as something for the male gaze. I hope it’s the recently aired BBC television show hosted by Dannii Minogue. I Kissed a Girl…