In my personal experiences in queer “activist” spaces, I have often felt a dissonant feeling about the uncommitment for action. This “activism” with no action! The “activists” becoming more “actors” at a performance of progress rather than tangible change. In my objective mind and what I will always tell people first, the mentality I go into these activist spaces is something along the lines of…
… that all effort is worthwhile, all efforts towards progress should not be halted just because they are not radical enough. We need to eat to enact the revolution. We need to make sure we survive today to protest tomorrow. The effort of the improvement of current living conditions should never be considered obsolete. Mental and physical health is super important, take care of yourself above anything. How could we honor the martyrs all around the world if we do not continue doing anything we can? How can we say that all the effort up until now is worth nothing? Isn’t the most revolutionary thing to have radical hope and to enact it in any way possible?
Perhaps it is because of my young self in these times of grand disillusionment with the world, but in my heart and people that know me deeply know I want to scream and bite people’s heads off for the incompetence and inaction that occurs. The anger that lights my eardrums on fire for the way that people cannot see how it is a waste of time to put energy on discourse on trivial matters is when people’s lives are on the line! How selfish it is to put your own feelings and ideologies first above the group! What happened to coalition-building?! How selfish and elitist it is to feud and then refuse to work together on the common goal because of your conceptions and perspectives on how you understood the theory that you read (or didn’t read)! Why is everyone just sitting around and talking about how they can’t do anything? What do you mean you are so angry you do nothing? How are you not so angry and do something? How could we honor the martyrs all around the world if we do not continue doing anything we can?
I believe both of these things at the same time but it does make me feel dizzy when in discourse I am told they are opposition. In contrast, I see them in innate relation. Doing everything we can, rest and action, despite it all is radical hope. To be a revolutionary you must be so angry at the world for its current state and its capacity to be better. Being impatient because it can be better and it isn’t. Imagining always ends up with me being on the street. Being an activist is having the radical hope that the revolution isn’t raining down on a random day like the rapture but you are going to be part of it.
Consciously I am aware that rarely have none of us gone through a truly unique experience. However, considering how every mind is an island, sometimes we forget the sea. Our antecedents and shoulders in which we stand upon to look out into the sea. As I was scavenging a zine to write about I stumbled upon the fabulous and extremely validating manifesto zine for the Lesbian Avengers. A hilarious and extremely dykey call to action, impatience, and mobilization effort. What a comfort…
Founded in 1992, the Lesbian Avengers were a direct action group focused on lesbian visibility and survival. According to their telling of their history: “Too impatient for lobbying or letter-writing, these fire-eating secretaries, students, cab drivers, journalists, artists and teachers joined together to create fabulous street actions that inserted lesbians into public life, forced political change, and redefined dykes as the coolest, most ferocious, girls on the block.”
The Lesbian Avengers’ Civil Rights Organizing Project (LACROP) went further, taking a group of lesbians where they’d never been before — into the heart of heartland politics. LACROP transformed grassroots organizing by putting local activists front and center, pushing them to be fully out, and eschewing mainstream campaign tactics that relied on people remaining in the closet. In Maine, it organized door-to-door canvassing and led community forums where people came out publicly—including teachers and small business owners. Where mainstream efforts in Idaho tended to do one thing, LACROP did almost the opposite: putting local queer people at the front of, and in charge of, goal setting, public events such as speak-outs and kiss-ins, and door-to-door outings sharing personal stories. By empowering queer people to come out and to engage directly with their communities, LACROP defeated an homophobic initiative in rural Idaho and laid long-term infrastructure for social change.
“Media was often key…The Lesbian Avengers shaped their actions for visual impact, and had media committees dedicated to outreach and ‘propaganda.’”
In the zine we have archived, the manifesto shows us this in the dykiest way possible. Bright pink and in all caps, I am truly being showered in lesbian rage. Calling out all lesbians from all corners and crevices they may be hiding in…
“IT’S TIME TO GET OUT OF THE BEDS, OUT OF THE BARS AND INTO THE STREETS TIME TO SEIZE THE POWER OF DYKE LOVE, DYKE VISION, DYKE ANGER DYKE INTELLIGENCE, DYKE STRATEGY. TIME TO ORGANIZE AND IGNITE. TIME TO GET TOGETHER AND FIGHT WE’RE INVISIBLE AND IT’S NOT SAFE- NOT AT HOME, ON THE JOB, IN THE STREETS OR IN THE COURTS WHERE ARE OUR LESBIAN LEADERS?”
The first page of this zine is a punch in the face but you like it. A punch that tells you to get your lesbo s*** together while having a good laugh. Truly enveloping yourself into the evil dyke archetype that gets matters mobile. There is an ever present sense of that impatience and exasperated feeling that any person, including myself, is overcome with one point or another that fuels a certain kind of anger:
“WE’RE NOT WAITING FOR THE RAPTURE. WE ARE THE APOCALYPSE. WE’LL BE YOUR DREAM AND THEIR NIGHTMARE.”
The Lesbian Avengers queer political language and “propaganda.” Using catchy short sentences of action and purpose such as the ones we have been too heavily familiarized with in campaign cycles. This time around in the most queer way possible of such language: instead of performative words to gain votes, its real promises. Instead of comforting and digestible slogans, we have “predatory” lesbianistic and often sexual threats to enact fear and recruit!
On the following page of the zine we are introduced more formally to the main aims and goals of the Lesbian Avengers: Who are the Lesbian Avengers? What is direct action? And why no abstract theoretical discussion?
They define direct action as “a public intervention ranging in creative form from marches to street theater to speak outs to cathartic spray painting of anti-hate slogans.”
Such creative interventions are what should be at the core of mobilization efforts to make the public uncomfortable, aware, and inconvenienced. Reminding that lesbians are here.
In the section on abstract theoretical discussion they ask “How many of us have sat in meetings arguing political theory to the point of mental and physical exhaustion, to the point where we run screaming to the nearest dance floor for release from the frustration?!” ME! ME! ME!
I will not make the case against abstract theoretical discussion, if anything I am all for it. I want to surround my life with abstractism, art, and theory. In the overdetermination of understanding and defining, we have lost the sauce. What the western mindset has failed to realize is that abstractism and theory is not the thing itself but the action of forming meaning and nomenclature for aspects of experience, humanity, and existence, that are based in reality. Simply that our language doesn’t not have tangible tools to describe such elements. What we are describing is very real and the action that must be connected to it must be very real as well. One drives the other and vice versa. Theory and abstractism exist because of reality. Discussions around theory that don’t leave you stimulated and itchy with the capacity and fuel to do something… going out to the street, creating something, forming a connection… babe. Discussions on political theory that lead to inaction because of political polarity… isn’t that the antithesis of why we are here? You forgot to touch the grass that you have been reading so much about! It’s right there!
Their communiqué-style newsletters gave activism the duality of action and being cool. “Look how much we’re getting done, and how much fun we’re having while we do it.” Using camp design, being loud and threatening about their lesbian activism, and putting their money where their mouth is, the Lesbian Avengers reminded me of my frustrations are not alone and to drown in my anger so it turns into passive resentment. There is always the fuel for it… like vandalism to a Navy billboard:
Valeria is interning at QZAP this semester. She is in her senior year at University of Wisconsin-Madison studying Gender & Women’s Studies. She was born and raised in Valencia, Venezuela and now lives in Teejop land (Madison, WI).
