Events tagged with "Women's Liberation Movement"
Bisexuality
Bisexuality is an attraction to both the same and opposite sex. Few of our contributors identified as bisexual, though a number reported having had relationships with the opposite sex, usually early in their life.Some gay people described themselves ...
Coming Out
'Coming Out' as a 'statement', whether personal or political, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Recognising and admitting one's own sexuality to one's self, is something every single one of us has done. The term 'coming out' is used retrospectively...
Fashion and identity as statement
Many lesbian and gay people have used clothing and fashion as a means of self expression, as a political or cultural statement, to create a new identity or to show membership of the LG community or sector of the community. The Women's Liberation Mov...
Gay, Lesbian and Womens press and publications
Over the years numerous national and local publications have come and gone which are produced by, and aimed at lesbians, gay men, and women (in the context of the Women's Liberation Movement). These have often been an invaluable source of informatio...
Lesbian Rights
During the emergence of both feminist politics and gay politics in the late sixties and seventies, many lesbians chose to fight for their rights within the context of the Women's Liberation Movement , rather than gay liberation, believing that they h...
Rubyfruit singing group is formed
During the 1970s, women's music was increasingly used as a means of political expression.Three Birmingham lesbians, Betty Hagglund, Caroline Hutton and Lorna Eady formed a singing group called Rubyfruit (named after Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown...
Women's Liberation Conference 1978 Birmingham
The last ever national Women's Liberation Conference was held in Birmingham in April 1978 at Ladywood School. The motion to have a separate freestanding seventh demand of the Women's Liberation Movement, 'An end to discrimination against lesbians', w...
Women's Liberation Movement
The Women's Liberation Movement, or Women's Movement, or feminism, is very closely linked with many lesbians' lives, particularly those coming to recognise or define themselves as lesbian during the 1970s and 1980s. There are so many contributions ...
Memories tagged with "Women's Liberation Movement"
Butch and Femme relationships
Butch and femme“What struck us, being politicos, and still does really because it still happens and I can’t bear it, was the butch and femme women’s relationships. There were butch women who’d beat up their femme partners, copied directly from straig...
Dykes leading activists in Women's Movement
"I think what caused most of the problems really in the Women's Liberation Movement was that a lot of the activism, printed newsletters and all the rest was done by dykes, gay women, and although there were married women with children, and single wom...
Fissures at the Birmingham WLM Day Conferences
Birmingham Women's Liberation Day Conferences were held regularly at Tindal Street School, Balsall Heath. “There was a lot of paranoia at the time, but it was interesting. I remember the one conference where we were saying that the local Women's Libe...
Getting involved in the women's movement
“I entered the Women's Liberation Movement and got to know people because we went on demos. People find it very hard to understand the Women's Liberation Movement because you didn’t join, you didn’t have a card, you didn’t have membership, you just w...
Jewish women
Trisha recalled “There were some difficult issues between Jewish and Arab women in the women's liberation movement, and in Birmingham, the Jewish women's group and Palestinian women's groups had dialogue, which just wasn’t happening elsewhere”....
Lesbian Mothers
260 Lesbian MothersTrisha got together with Jackie (Atkins) around 1988/9; they bought their first house together in 1990. “The first thing she said to me was ‘You’re not going to have kids are you, or I’m off!?’ Jackie had kids who had by then grown...
Lesbians were 'woman-identified' in the 70s
Gill and Betty said they were both identifying with the Women's Liberation Movement in the mid 1970s. B: “There was some sort of crossover then; for a while there used to be things like women's discos, where you would get lesbians going but also stra...
Mixing at the Old Mo
“We (the feminists) had a lot of social contact with other lesbians, mainly around the Old Moseley Arms pool room. The ‘straight dykes’ (meaning non-feminists who’d come through the gay scene rather than the women's liberation movement), thought we w...
Political lesbians (late 70s)
"Some of the dykes' sexuality was questioned sometimes and there was a big thing going on in the movement then about Women's Liberation Movement activists who became gay as a political end because it was a political statement to be gay. Ref: politica...
Rubyfruit played Birmingham and Chicago
“Rubyfruit consisted of Caroline Hutton, Lorna Eady and myself. Rubyfruit came about because some of us had been to Frankie Armstrong’s voice workshops; Caroline Hutton took me along, so there was already this interest in women's music, and all those...
Women’s Liberation Conference 1978
“There was beginning to be a feeling that the Women's Liberation Movement was on a downward slope and everyone metaphorically threw things at each other at the National Women's Conference in Birmingham in 1978 which was the last national conference. ...
Working with men in the NUT
"My emphasis was on NUT (National Union of Teachers) politics as much as anything because by then I was well into the NUT which made me enemies in the Women's Liberation Movement because radical revolutionary feminists believe that you shouldn’t have...