LESBIAN VISIBILITY WEEK - 2022

Lesbian visibility week first began in July 1990 in California. It started as a way for lesbians to increase awareness of their identities and issues relating to their needs, for example discussions on safe sex. It has since grown and spread to the rest of the US and UK and is now celebrated in April as a way to publicly identify yourself as a lesbian and support lesbians in your life.

Although gay women have always existed, they were never actually recognised by the general population and governments. Therefore, unlike the law imposed on gay men in the 1800s it was never illegal for women to have sexual relations with another woman. This is in part due to Queen Victoria believing it would be physically impossible for two women to have sex so the law was never passed.

Unfortunately, gay women have still been marginalized and punished throughout history. In the medieval period women were often executed or imprisoned for having same sex relationships. More recently, queer women are sexualized and degraded in the media, especially film, TV and porn with ‘’storylines’’ often making the women seem as something belonging to men.

Through all of this, gay women have been key parts of Queer History. During the Aids epidemic when Doctors and Nurses refused to treat people due to the fear of contracting the disease, a group of gay women got together and filled the hospitals as volunteers to support and befriend those suffering with the disease, particularly gay men who were not out or had been rejected by their friends and families. In 1983 the San Diago Blood Sisters were formed. These were a group of women who organised regular blood drives where they would direct their donations to the gay men who had the virus. During the first day of the blood drive over 200 women turned up to donate their blood, this was replicated across the US as the pandemic continued.

Points like this emphasise the need for lesbian week of visibility. I also found while researching this topic if proved difficult to find information on specific Lesbian history as most pages opted to discuss the history of gay men further highlighting the need to improve education and awareness regarding Queer Women.