Chavela Vargas:
I’ve had to fight to be myself and to be respected. I’m proud to carry this stigma and call myself a lesbian. I don’t boast about it or broadcast it, but I don’t deny it. I’ve had to confront society and the Church, which says that homosexuals are damned. That’s absurd. How can someone who’s born like this be judged? I didn’t attend lesbian classes. No one taught me to be this way. I was born this way, from the moment I opened my eyes in this world. I’ve never been to bed with a man. Never. That’s how pure I am; I have nothing to be ashamed of. My gods made me the way I am.
Lea DeLaria:
As a standup, I try to change the world. As an entertainer, I try to entertain. And as a lesbian, I try to pick up the prettiest girl in the room.
Audre Lorde:
Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me, where I loved some invaluable piece of myself apart from me–so different that I had to stretch and grow in order to recognize her. And in that growing, we came to separation, that place where work begins.
My sister came to visit me a few weeks ago. Prior to her coming, one of the local entertainment companies shouted me on twitter with an invitation to one of their events. I hesitated because she would be here. Sugar encouraged me to go as a networking opportunity.
I told my sister. I invited her to go with me, but told her she didn’t have to. She said she’d go. She came for a few days, we went out for an hour. Came back home.
Now weeks after her visit, I get a handwritten letter from my grandmother blasting me out for taking my sister to a gay club. Continue Reading →
Amanda Bearse:
You can’t type what a lesbian is. We’re anything and everything. The one thing in common is that we make love to other women. So give up trying to limit us.
Lynne Lavner:
The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals, and three-hundred and sixty two admonishments to heterosexuals. This doesn’t mean that God loves heterosexuals any less, it’s just that they need more supervision.
Amanda Bearse:
The most important political step that any gay man or lesbian can take is to come out of the closet. It’s been proven that it is easier to hate us and to fear us if you can’t see us.
Mabel Maney:
For a long time I thought I wanted to be a nun. Then I realized that what I really wanted to be was a lesbian.
Rita Mae Brown:
Women who love women are Lesbians. Men, because they can only think of women in sexual terms, define Lesbian as sex between women.
Amy Winehouse:
I like pin-up girls. I’m more of a boy than a girl. I’m not a lesbian, though – not before a sambuca anyway.
Toni Jordan:
Don’t tell anyone at the church this, but I think girls going out with girls is quite sensible. Imagine not having to do all the housework, and if you found a nice girl the same size you’d have double the wardrobe and you’d never have to shave your legs or clean whiskers out of the sink. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do it.
Jeanette Winterson:
As far as I was concerned men were something you had around the place, not particularly interesting, but quite harmless. I had never shown the slightest feeling for them, and apart from my never wearing a skirt, saw nothing else in common between us.
I read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, my junior year of high school. I had an older aunt that was away in college majoring in English. Because I was going to a predominantly white school, she wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing out on black literature, so she was constantly recommending authors to me.
The Bluest Eye wasn’t the first book of Toni Morrison’s that I read. I believe I picked it because it was short and thought it would be easy. Well, as the saying goes, don’t judge a book by it’s cover. This book was packed with so much symbolism it made it one of the most difficult books I’ve ever read. Toni was so clever with it too. It reads easy, unlike some of her other work, like Beloved. It’s not until you start researching it that you start to discover there is so much going on under the surface. Continue Reading →