The importance of the Women’s Movement in a lesbian’s life.
When I was in third grade gym class, my teacher told us that we couldn’t do shirts and skins to play kickball because we were girls and we couldn’t take our shirts off. Why The Fuck Not? thought my tiny brain completely unaware of the fact that our breasts were considered tits and the boys weren’t. Scratch that. Maybe my seven-year-old mind didn’t think with the F-word yet. Why the HELL not? I thought. I didn’t get it. Neither did any of my other as-of-yet-boobless classmates. So, with me leading the charge, we all ripped off our shirts, waved them above our heads and ran through the school screaming, “Free the girls! Free the girls!” Later on in the principal’s office sitting with my mother, who had been called in due to that riot, I still didn’t see what the big deal was all about. I was released with no punishment because my mother totally agreed with me. She was a beautiful, heroic, stylin' feminist, and she planted the seeds of equality in me from the start. I’m not sure that she knew those seeds would grow into a big lezzie tree, but I choose to think she would be proud.
No, we didn’t end up being able to take off our shirts, but something even better happened that day. All the girls of our gym class united in a cause for equality. We didn’t have the language for it, but we had the sistahood after that. The unspoken understanding that we were right and the ‘system’ was wrong. Even some of the boys agreed with us; they couldn’t see the reason why we weren’t treated the same either. I think I’ve been chasing that dragon of feminist togetherness ever since.
And I’ve found it. I’ve found it in my friends, in my bandmates, in my mentors and heroes. I’ve found it in my lovers. I’ve discovered it in music, books, and movies, in everything. Because feminism is there, if you want to see it and if you take the time to unravel it and move it forward. I’m still finding it. Discovering the world as a feminist is hard, challenging, but ultimately it’s the feeling of being finally awake. Equality, although it sometimes seems out of reach, is the elixir to cure our diseased culture. Like Gloria Steinem says, “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”
In a way, I think that being a feminist is the reason I ended up being queer/lez/gay whatever the fuck you choose to call it. Well that, and I really really love sleeping with girls. Seeing the wrong in the world, seeing and understanding the sexism, racism, and homophobia that is all too prevalent in our culture has enabled me to also see what the world could be like without it. It’s given and continues to give me hope and purpose.
Feminism paved the way to free my vag. And a free vag is a powerful one. It’s a vag that can fight for other rights, for freedom from FGM and for having 9 female Supreme Court justices, and for a 50 percent female Senate and House. And a free Vag can get me to the polls in November to vote for a person who will make Equality a priority. Those women who were beaten and starved and imprisoned so we could get the vote are waiting in the shadows for all of us to stand up and use our voices. The people who were beaten and lynched and murdered and violated stand with us to keep this country moving forward. With our freedom comes some serious responsibility. As we gain more power, we need to bring other women along with us. That only makes us stronger. Understand that without feminism we’re all just a bunch of people cruising each other. We can still be that, just with more awareness and dignity. We can’t just be our sexuality. We have to also be our power, so we can have more freedom.
And we do have freedom. Yeah, we can marry each other. That happened. But we can’t get the same fucking pay as a man doing the same job. We aren’t completely protected under the law because WOMEN still aren’t in the Constitution. We do not have equal rights. We aren’t there. We women still have a fuck of a long way to go. Marriage isn’t the end all and be all. It’s a good tax break, it comes with some great benefits and some necessary rights, but it certainly doesn’t make us equal.
Every day the fucking Right-wing assholes chip away at our rights as women. It’s harder than ever to get an abortion, and if you don’t think that matters to you cause you’re a dyke, well it does. Healthcare is healthcare and not having access to clinics also means that we don’t have access to mammograms or other testing that we need as lezzies/dykes/queers/trans. Without free access to reproductive rights we have very little access to women’s healthcare in general. If I hadn’t had access to mammograms, I would be dead. It’s that fucking simple. I had breast cancer and it was a doozy. But I survived, thrived, because I was diagnosed early. And I was diagnosed early because the clinic existed. But if the misogynists and religious zealots in office have it their way, we not only will be pregnant and barefoot and uneducated, we will lose gay marriage and we will lose a lot more dykes to cancer and poverty and other illnesses.
We need to move forward. We haven't even started yet. Yep, I’m a lezbo. Queer. Fluid. Whatever. AND I’m a feminist. I simply believe in the equality of all human beings. Don’t you? We can make a difference. We can love who we want, fight for who we want, live how we want, and make it possible for others to do the same. We can drink, fuck and laugh and fight for equality. We can do more than just ‘like’ a cause on Facebook. We can free the girls. All of them. Free the Girls! Free the Girls.
Get involved. Vote. Volunteer for ERA coalition, Astraea, Planned Parenthood, Equality Now or any other organization that works for you. Free the fucking girls.
About the author:
Elizabeth Ziff is the lead singer of the band BETTY.
Non profit: www.thebettyeffect.org