(no subject)

[morgan_dhu]

Del Martin has died.

She and her wife Phyllis Lyon were heroes to me, from the moment I found their book, Lesbian/woman and started reading it.

I can still remember how incredibly exciting and empowering it was for the teenager I was in the early 70s to read Lesbian/Woman. My memory of the contents is rather vague after all these years, but I will never forget how I felt when I read it, how it felt to realise that there were other women - lots of other women - who loved women, that there were women working for the rights of women who loved women to be treated just like anyone else. That women who loved women had a history, and could organise.

I was already a budding young activist, just beginning to get involved with political and feminist groups. And I was in the process of coming out - though I wasn't exactly sure just what I was coming out as, at the time it seemed that lesbian was the closest thing to what I was.

Del and Phyllis' story - about themselves, about the history of lesbians, about the formation of the Daughters of Bilitis - was part of what helped me make me a stronger and more committed activist for social justice, part of what helped me to understand who I was as a woman who loved women (later I'd discover that the identity that suited me best was that of a bisexual, but there are some things that lesbians and bisexual women share, and Del and Phyllis spoke to those things in me) and part of what helped me understand that being out was in itself a vital political act.

Sometimes, in this day and age, when there's a section devoted to queer studies in every self-respecting bookstore, it's hard to remember what it was like when there were just a few people - lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgendered people - brave enough to tell their stories to the world so that other people like them, people who challenged gender roles deep in the core of sexual and gender identity, would know that we were not alone, that there wasn't anything wrong with us.

Del Martin was one of the people who gave me that incalculably precious gift when I was young and uncertain enough about myself to really need it.

I am grateful to her, grateful for the legacy she leaves us, grateful for her years of fighting for all of our right to be who we are and love who we will and have that acknowledged by the society we live in. The world is a better place because of her.

Comments

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

This is a beautiful tribute.

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this. I hadn't heard the news yet. I too have an old seventies copy of Lesbian/Woman. I read about their wedding when it took place in June, and was very glad for them. I did think Del Martin looked quite frail in the photo. I am very sorry to hear of her death.