I’ve been really sad ever since hearing the news yesterday that Del Martin died. The moment that she and Phyllis Lyon were married just a couple of months ago was so beautiful, and even though I have an incredibly complicated relationship to the institution of marriage I was incredibly touched by the fact that they were the first couple to be married. Yesterday I heard about her death before a lot of news outlets had picked it up and I just kept thinking about how sad it was, and what an inspiration their relationship is to so many of us in the community. When I got home from work and Kestryl told me that all the flags in San Francisco including a rainbow flag were flying at half mast in her honor I nearly lost it, it was such a beautiful image, and yet as a femme I feel incredibly conflicted.

As most folks know Del Martin and her partner Phyllis Lyon  founded Daughters of Bilitis,the first national lesbian organization, and as part of that ran the organization’s monthly magazine The Ladder. This all relates to femmeness because the Daughters of Bilitis as an organization was primarily focused on the needs of middle class white lesbians, and encouraged its members to avoid standing out so as not to tarnish the cultural appearance of the rest of them. This means that the group actively encouraged folks to not cross-dress, to avoid appearing as too different, and to not embrace butch-femme cultures and identities.

Even talking about this feels complicated to me because she just died and I know that her wife Phyllis must be completely distraught but my own feelings are so conflicted. Through her life’s work she helped make so many strides for the larger community, and I know that so many of the things that I do and say today are because of the work that she did to make it safe enough to be a lesbian. At the same time, her life’s work explicitly compounded the silencing and oppression that butches and femmes have and continue to face. As a femme in my mid-twenties I have a difficult time even comprehending the magnitude of what it meant to proudly be a femme who loved butches during the height of the Daughters of Bilitis and other organizations who effectively made it clear that they were not welcome, were dangerous to the success of the battle for equality, and that they were ‘too much.’

I know how it feel to know that my life, and identity are ‘too much’ for the mainstream LGBT movement and I can’t stop feeling like the precedent that was set by Del Martin and others laid the groundwork for today’s LGBT organizations to feel that it is acceptable to continue to ignore the needs of trans people, poor people, people of color, queer folks, youth, and last but certainly not least butches and femmes.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 11:47 am and is filed under musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.