A message to the student who wanted to know about the lesbian archives

 and the 1980
Several days ago, I received a message from a student wanting to know about a lesbiana archive project I had back in the 1990s.... somehow the message has disappeared. I'm reaching out to you through this blog. Please message me again!

There was a recent post in Slate titled "Dyke Culture and the Disappearing L" that said:

My generation of lesbian activists, who honed our identity politics and confronted racism and classism in the spaces of women’s music events and women’s bookstores, are approaching a cultural expiration date. Having achieved many of the radical goals we pursued through the late 20th century—same-sex marriage, antidiscrimination laws, openly lesbian celebrities and politicians—we are indeed celebrating new opportunities to be out and proud. Yet having been permitted to be “out,” many of us are now spending the energy of our menopausal years pushing back against encroaching disappearance; our own invisibility. Dyke identity, that specific nomenclature of the fierce woman-identified woman, has been replaced by the more inclusive queer, as a new era of thoughtful LGBT activists proclaim their disidentification with the categories woman and lesbian.

(See here for the entire article: http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/12/22/disappearing_lesbians_and_the_need_to_preserve_dyke_culture.html)

As the generation of lesbians that I came of age with become elders, we have much to share about what it was like to be queer in the 1960s and 1970s and the 1980s. I had a son when the only lesbians who had children were the women who had married, had children, and then come out. Sometimes I wonder if today's young lesbian mothers know what we older lesbian mothers went through to raise children at a time that our children could be taken from us because being a lesbian was inherently considered being an unfit mother.

In the 1990s, I sought out the women who had come out in the 1950s, wanting to know what it was like for them. Each generation has our own challenges and successes, our own history. We are all connected, not by blood, but by love and courage.

Just know, that it made me very happy to hear from you and I am happy to share whatever I can.