Lesbians Quotes & Sayings

Interviewer: Did you hear t.A.T.u's version of 'How Soon Is Now'?
Morrissey: Yes, it was magnificent. Absolutely. Again, I don't know much about them.
Interviewer: They're the teenage Russian lesbians.
Morrissey: Well, aren't we all? — Morrissey

Modernism probably wouldn't have happened without lesbians in Paris. — Diana Souhami

Hip-hop is contributing to American society's misogyny and racism, hyper-sexuality anti-Black representations. Hip-Hop isn't setting the standard for misogyny. No one reduces the presidency to misogyny, although we've had misogynistic presidents. No one reduces our government to being solely homophobic, although we have a government with a don't ask, don't tell policy for gays and lesbians in the military. — Bakari Kitwana

Ever since the Evil Empire turned out to be a collection of third-world countries, Americans aligned on the far right have tried to cast gay men and lesbians as the new enemy, calculating deviants seducing the nation's young, anti-Avon ladies selling sodomy door-to-door. This simply won't wash. Just as seeing the Russians up close and personal on television humanized them, so seeing the lesbian grandmother of two little girls wearing her gold medal with pride makes the notion of otherness, much less deviance, silly and ignorant. — Anna Quindlen

Is it the part of the police department to harass me when this city is a flagrant vice capital of the civilized world?" Ignatius bellowed over the crowd in front of the store. "This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft. If you have a moment, I shall endeavor to discuss the crime problems with you, but don't make the mistake of bothering me. — John Kennedy Toole

Apparently, lesbians and gay men who have no desire "to become queer" have failed at a task that is obligatory for them, whether or not they are aware of it. Halperin, like Foucault, in short, is yet another busybody who has an agenda for other people's lives. — Bruce Bawer

If indeed all lives mattered, we would not need to emphatically proclaim that "Black Lives Matter." Or, as we discover on the BLM website: Black Women Matter, Black Girls Matter, Black Gay Lives Matter, Black Bi Lives Matter, Black Boys Matter, Black Queer Lives Matter, Black Men Matter, Black Lesbians Matter, Black Trans Lives Matter, Black Immigrants Matter, Black Incarcerated Lives Matter. Black Differently Abled Lives Matter. Yes, Black Lives Matter, Latino/Asian American/Native American/Muslim/Poor and Working-Class White Peoples Lives matter. There are many more specific instances we would have to nane before we can ethically and comfortably claim that All Lives Matter. — Angela Y. Davis

I think that older lesbians definitely didn't take care of themselves. They didn't exercise. But the younger lesbians, they're very different. They go to the gym. They manage their eating. They're much more fashion-conscious. — Jackie Warner

Gay marriage will be universally accepted in time. But if I may be so bold as to say to gays and lesbians, don't wait for that time to arrive. Just as my father and his generation did not 'wait' for their civil rights, nor should you. The toothpaste ain't going back in the tube. The tide has turned. — John Ridley

Seen on her own, the woman was not so remarkable. Tall, angular, aquiline features, with the close-cropped hair which was fashionably called an Eton crop, he seemed to remember, in his mother's day, and about her person the stamp of that particular generation. She would be in her middle sixties, he supposed, the masculine shirt with collar and tie, sports jacket, grey tweed skirt coming to mid-calf. Grey stockings and laced black shoes. He had seen the type on golf courses and at dog shows - invariably showing not sporting breeds but pugs - and if you came across them at a party in somebody's house they were quicker on the draw with a cigarette lighter than he was himself, a mere male, with pocket matches. The general belief that they kept house with a more feminine, fluffy companion was not always true. Frequently they boasted, and adored, a golfing husband. ("Don't Look Now") — Daphne Du Maurier

I hope that I can get people to read it without having to change it. Especially now that the strip has more different kinds of characters. It's really not all lesbians any more. — Alison Bechdel

I'm not unaware of the fact that probably my biggest audience is lesbians, and is probably the main reason why I've attained the success that I have, — Sharon Gless

My Lesbian history tells me that the vice squad is never our friend even when it is called in by women; that when police rid a neighborhood of 'undesirables,' the undesirables have also included street Lesbians; that I must find another way to fight violence against women without doing violence to my Lesbian self. I must find a way that does not cooperate with the state forces against sexuality, forces that raided my bars, beat up my women, entrapped us in bathrooms, closed our plays, and banned our books. — Joan Nestle

Something very unusual, a chocolate-flavoured log of goats' cheese. "Made by lesbians in Wales," Sam had explained superfluously. — Philip Hensher

It's a struggle but that's why we exist, so that another generation of Lesbians of color will not have to invent themselves, or their history, all over again. — Audre Lorde

There are lesbians, God knows ... if you came up through lesbian circles in the forties and fifties in New York ... who were not feminist and would not call themselves feminists. — Audre Lorde

The breakdown of mummies and daddies was an important part of lesbian relationships in the Bagatelle ... For some of us, however, role-playing reflected all the depreciating attitudes toward women which we loathed in straight society. It was the rejection of these roles that had drawn us to 'the life' in the first place. Instinctively, without particular theory or political position or dialectic, we recognized oppression as oppression, no matter where it came from.
But those lesbians who had carved some niche in the pretend world of dominance/subordination rejected what they called our 'confused' lifestyle, and they were in the majority. — Audre Lorde

The sooner being gay is completely normalized, the sooner homophobic prohibitions against touch will be taken off straight men. As much as gay men have faced the brunt of homophobic violence, straight men have been banished to a desert of physical isolation by these same homophobic fanatics who police lesbians and gays in our society. The result has been a generation of American men who do not hug each other, do not hold hands and cannot sit close together without the homophobic litmus test kicking in. — Mark Greene

The term "queer" is not simply a 1990s recoding of a pre-Stonewall epithet but here refers to a myriad forms of same-sex and other non-normative kinds of desire that have come to inform certain specific identity groups such as gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender individuals, transsexuals, transvestites, cross dressers, drag queens, drag kings, alternative straights and anyone in between. — Chantal Zabus

The dykes versus the fags, but every straight man in the U.S who watched porn wanted to see two women getting off together. Lesbians held a unique place in the intolerant American psyche: it was the men who lay with men who challenged the words of the Holy Bible — Jenna Hilary Sinclair

I left the bed as she had left it, unmade and rumpled, coverlets awry, so that her body's print might rest still warm beside my own.
Until the next day I did not go to bathe, I wore no clothes and did not dress my hair, for fear I might erase some sweet caress.
That morning I did not eat, nor yet at dusk, and put no rouge nor powder on my lips, so that her kiss might cling a little longer.
I left the shutters closed, and did not open the door, for fear the memory of the night before might vanish with the wind. — Pierre Louis

I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. But I also believe that gay and lesbians and gay and lesbian couples, those who have been in long-term relationships, deserve to be treated respectfully, they deserve to have benefits. — Dick Cheney

I don't think there is any good answer to the question why shouldn't gays and lesbians who want to serve their country be allowed to do it. — John Bolton

Despite our founding principles and the many ways our constitution has protected individual liberties, we do, let's admit it, have a long history of shutting people out
african americans, women, gays and lesbians, people with disabilities
and throughout our history, we have found too many ways to divide and exclude people from their ownership of the law and protection under the law. — Hillary Clinton

If lesbians were purple, none would be admitted to respected places. But if all lesbians suddenly turned purple today, society would be surprised at the number of purple people in high places. — Sidney Abbott

In Indiana, gays and lesbians can be fired from their jobs with impunity, and in Arkansas, it's the same thing. We need those protective laws to truly have an equal society. — George Takei

Sarah Palin is speaking out about the oil spill. She said, I'm not kidding, we should ask the Dutch for help with the spill because the Dutch have the world's best dikes. So let me get this straight. It is OK to cover lesbians in oil but you just can't let them get married. — Craig Ferguson

I was wearing my best Gap turtleneck and my dates were two adult lesbians, so yea, I was pretty cool. — Tina Fey

Most of these feminists are radical, frustrated lesbians, many of them, and man-haters, and failures in their relationships with men, and who have declared war on the male gender. The biblical condemnation of feminism has to do with its radical philosophy and goals. That's the bottom line. — Jerry Falwell

She puts her hands on either side of my face, and the room falls away. I have never gotten so lost in a kiss before.
And then, the space between us explodes. My heart keeps missing beats and my hands cannot bring her close enough to me. I taste her and realize I have been starving.
I have loved before, but it didn't feel like this.
I have kissed before, but it didn't burn me alive.
Maybe it lasts a minute, and maybe it's an hour. All I know is that kiss, and how soft her skin is when it brushes against mine, and that even if I did not know it until now, I have been waiting for this person forever. — Jodi Picoult

I think that lion females are really lesbians and the males are used strictly for their sperm — Shelly Laurenston

Well, obviously, I'm not allowed to speak about the legal battles, but I love lesbians. — Jennifer Nettles

Public transportation is for jerks and lesbians. — Homer

I first did standup at a lesbian bar. I didn't know it was a lesbian bar at the time, but the lesbians loved me. I was huge among the lesbians and am to this day. I'm thrilled with the lesbian support. — Seth Rogen

For many years now, I have been an outspoken supporter of civil and human rights for gay and lesbian people. Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions. — Coretta Scott King

My fear
and what Ive read and heard
is that lesbians feel like [The L Word cast] all have long hair, and everyone is too pretty. Theres so much pressure on this one show, the first of its kind, to represent every dyke or lesbian in the world. But [lesbian viewers] are not going to be disappointed, because by the end of the first season [there are] a lot of diverse characters. — Leisha Hailey

No census was taken of the number of gay men and lesbians who entered the military. But if Alfred Kinsey's wartime surveys were accurate and applied as much to the military as to the civilian population, at least 650,000 and as many as 1.6 million male soldiers were homosexual. — Allan Berube

If you believe in equality, if you believe in standing up for the rights of all, especially for people most affected by bigotry and discrimination, then you have no choice but to be present and accounted for when it comes to standing up for gays and lesbians in our society. — Michael Moore

Over the past seventy years the various identity struggles have to some degree remediated the great wrongs that have been done to workers, people of color, Indigenous Peoples, women, gays and lesbians, and the disabled, while helping to humanize our society overall. But they have also had a shadow side in the sense that they have encouraged us to think of ourselves more as determined than as self-determining, more as victims of 'isms' (racism, sexism, capitalism, ableism) than as human beings who have the power of choice. For our own survival we must assume individual and collective responsibility for creating a new nation - one that is loved rather than feared and one that does not have to bribe and bully other nations to win support. — Grace Lee Boggs

I opposed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying. — Barack Obama

The beginning point at both conferences must be that everything is a woman's issue. That means racism in a woman's issue, just as is anti-Semitism, Palestinian homelessness, rural development, ecology, the persecution of lesbians, and the exploitative practices of global corporations. — Charlotte Bunch

Women who love women are Lesbians. Men, because they can only think of women in sexual terms, define Lesbian as sex between women. — Rita Mae Brown

We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are - whether it's here in the United States or, as Hillary (Clinton) mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda. — Barack Obama

I wondered if all women did with other women was lie and hug. — Sarah Winman

Even if there are a lot women in films, there are few who are lesbians, that people know about. — Catherine Deneuve

The radical left is doing everything they can to destroy the moral fiber of America. They want to do away with the family. I am absolutely persuaded one of the reasons so many lesbians are at the forefront of the pro-choice movement is because being a mother is the unique
characteristic of womanhood, and these lesbians will never be mothers naturally, so they don't want anybody else to have that privilege either. — Pat Robertson

Amber Rorman had told me too that our third grade teacher, Ms. Lizetti, was really a lesbian, which I thought was a disease until I asked Amber and Amber told me to ask her mother who told me to ask my mother, who said, "Lesbians are women who like to have sex with other women," which I didn't think was all that weird. — Shannon Celebi

You don't have to be a channel for every free choice denied.
Every porcelain bride with no property rights, you don't have to prove you can fight like a man, leave the screaming to the lesbians!
Feminism is an outdated word, but see there's still need for women's movement because we still believe that our sexual power is all we have, we cling to it tighter to it then our own ovaries and we will pluck trust from fellow women who threaten to take it.
It's huge, this tumbling history that we carry on our shoulders. It's heavy and sometimes, it's hard to keep your composure.
Sometimes you just have to explode. — Lauren Zuniga

Frankly, [the definition of woman] is a problem that the lesbians do not have because of a change of perspective. 'Woman' has meaning only in heterosexual systems of thought and heterosexual, economic systems. Lesbians are not women. — Monique Wittig

Any story dealing, however seriously, with homosexual love is taken to be a story about homosexuality while stories dealing with heterosexual love are seen as stories about the individual people they portray. This is as much a problem today for American filmmakers who cannot conceive of the presence of gay characters in a film unless the specific subject of the film is homosexuality. Lesbians and gay men are thereby classified as purely sexual creatures, people defined solely by their sexual urges. — Vito Russo

I am two lesbians in a man's body. — Eddie Izzard

All women are lesbians except those who don't know it ... — Jill Johnston

The nights were advantageous, too. After they kissed their families goodnight, it was expected that they would share a bed, their bodies close, their movements obscured under the covers. — Alexis Coe

If I believe in humanity and all that encompasses it including being kind and respectful of others, then I hereby declare that my love extends to gay, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders. — Gloria D. Gonsalves

Fundamentalist Christianity is not just a threat to lesbians and gays, but to all Americans who cherish democracy and the rights and protections guaranteed us by the U.S. constitution. — Mel White

The love of wisdom is a way of life; that is to say, it's a set of practices that have to do with mustering the courage to think critically about ourselves, society, and the world; mustering the courage to empathize; the courage, I would say, to love; the courage to have compassion with others, especially the widow and the orphan, the fatherless and the motherless, poor and working peoples, gays and lesbians, and so forth - and the courage to hope. — Cornel West

Women who love women, who choose women to nurture and support and to create a living environment in which to work creatively and independently, are lesbians. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

Are you sure you've never dated girls before? You're awfully good at this."
Hunter's gaze returned to me. I could see some of that hated anger still in her eyes. "Kissing?"
I couldn't help laughing. "That, top. But I meant facing off against the Purity Crusader over there," I clarified. "I've been with women who were too afraid to even hold my hand in public."
I don't see it as a big deal," Hunter replied. "It shouldn't matter if a person is straight or gay or something in between. If I want to show i care about someone, I shouldn't have to hide it. — Eliza Lentzski

How deep congenital sex-inversion roots may be gathered from the fact that the pleasure-dream of the male Urning has to do with male persons, and of the female with females. — Richard Von Krafft-Ebing

Gays have rights, lesbians have rights, men have rights, women have rights, even animals have rights. How many of us have to die before the community recognizes that we are not expendable? — Octavia St. Laurent

Boy lovers and the lesbians who have young lovers ... are not child molesters. The child abusers are priests, teachers, therapists, cops and parents who force their staid morality onto the young people in their custody. — Patrick Califia

This informal "pre-exclusion" is probably the more powerful and widely exerted form in many churches. It is in my denomination. As the divorced and remarried don't seek communion at a Roman Catholic parish, gays and lesbians don't seek to participate in most evangelical churches. — Ken Wilson

Oh, fuck. Those kinds of tests. I wish I could empathize, but the only disease lesbians get from sex is lockjaw. — Tiffany Reisz

Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future. — Audre Lorde

Compared with lesbians, gays seem to be more unapologetic about their sexual orientation. The former must not have balls. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Even as a young girl, straight women loved me. Straight women like me a lot more than lesbians do. Isn't that weird? — Jackie Warner

It was cold in the street and I crossed to the lighted blaze of shops in Rue Fuad. In a grocer's window I saw a small tin of olives with the name Orvieto on it, and overcome by a sudden longing to be on the right side of the Mediterranean, entered the shop: bought it: had it opened there and then: and sitting down at a marble table in that gruesome light I began to eat Italy, its dark scorched flesh, hand-modelled spring soil, dedicated vines. I felt that Melissa would never understand this. I should have to pretend I had lost the money. I did not see at first the great car which she had abandoned in the street with its engine running. She came into the shop with swift and resolute suddenness and said, with the air of authority that Lesbians, or women with money, assume with the obviously indigent: 'What did you mean by your remark about the antinomian nature of irony?' - or some such sally which I have forgotten. — Lawrence Durrell

Forty-two years after Dr. King was murdered, we are still a nation of inequality. People of color, women, gays, lesbians, and others are still treated as second-class citizens. Yes, things have changed but we have still not achieved equality among all humans. And nonhuman animals continue to be chattel property without any inherent value. — Gary L. Francione

Around 2001, I started analyzing lesbians. I started to realize that even really butch-acting or -dressing women still had a strong female identity that I never had. — Chaz Bono

[Two respondents] minimized the assimilationist implications of the dominant account; Russ Silver rejects the idea entirely.
I have no interest in being accepted. I consider this system corrupt, and I don't want to be accepted by it. We're in this together. Faggots, junkies, women, blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians, don't you see it? Don't you see that our white male government doesn't care about us? When I say this it shocks coat-and-tie lesbians and gay men everywhere. Well, I'm sorry, folks; if you had AIDS you would know what I know: The government doesn't give a goddamn cent for a faggot's life. — Vera Whisman

Although we are feminists and lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white women who are separatists demand. — Combahee River Collective

I think what you're seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays and lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers, and that they've got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out. — Barack Obama

I know that of all the great shifts that have occurred in America
the freedom of slaves, the rights of women, the equality of gays and lesbians
none has happened easily, and certainly none has happened instantly and without serious attacks and backlash. But the reason we have these things is because the fair-minded people who came before us would not give up. In my life, I have seen elections stolen
either outright or through the electoral college. I have seen wars fought because there was no other way to get peace. I have seen the rich get richer and I have seen the poor get poorer. I have seen facts get harder and harder to hide
and easier and easier to manipulate. I have been angry and I have been frustrated and I have been ecstatic and I have been proven right and wrong and back again. I have given up on some things, but I have refused to give up on most things. And I can honestly say that all of it
all of it
seems to have led me to where we are, here and now. — David Levithan

My father tried to get me to be around gay people a lot when I was young. He owned a gay bookstore and it had a lot of gay literature and art books and he wanted me to be taken care of by the young gays and lesbians who worked for him. — Margaret Cho

Right now the institution of marriage feels very one-sided, and I want to live in a country where we all have equal rights. I have so many friends who are gays and lesbians who would so badly want to get married, that I wouldn't be able to sleep with myself [if I got married before they could]. — Charlize Theron

The woman who refuses to see her sexual organs as mere wood chips, designed to make the man's life more comfortable, is in danger of becoming a lesbian
an active, phallic woman, an intellectual virago with a fire of her own ... The lesbian body is a particularly pernicious and depraved version of the female body in general; it is susceptible to auto-eroticism, clitoral pleasure and self-actualization. — Sigmund Freud

Pink was for girls.
Girly girls who wore flavored lip gloss and read magazines and talked on the phone lying on their perfect, lacy bedspreads with their feet in the air. Girls who spent six months looking for the perfect dress to wear to the school formal.
Girls who liked boys. — Lili Wilkinson

God says in the bible that we should love our neighbor and he created us all as equals. I know in my heart that gays and lesbians should have the same government rights that Spencer and I will when we get married. So, yes, this blonde Christian believes in gay marriage. — Heidi Montag

I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America ... I point the finger in their face and say you helped this happen. — Jerry Falwell

In country music, there are certain female artists, like Gretchen Wilson, where you're going to find lesbians because they're responding to that more aggressive side. — Melissa Etheridge

A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives- our skin color, the land or concrete we grew up on, our sexual longings- all fuse to create a politic born out of necessity. Here, we attempt to bridge the contradictions in our experience:
We are the colored in a white feminist movement.
We are the feminists among the people of our culture.
We are often the lesbians among the straight.
We do this bridging by naming our selves and by telling our stories in our own words. — Michelle Cliff

I don't watch a lot of porn, but a typical search term for me is "fat lesbians." What a beautiful fantasy: to be accepted and embraced and adored as your biggest self, the most you, by a woman who is her fullest her. — Melissa Broder

There were about thirty of them, I think - all women; all seated at tables, bearing drinks and books and papers. You might have passed any one of them upon the street, and thought nothing; but the effect of their appearance all combined was rather queer. They were dressed, not strangely, but somehow distinctly. They wore skirts - but the kind of skirts a tailor might design if he were set, for a dare, to sew a bustle for a gent. Many seemed clad in walking-suits or riding-habits. Many wore pince-nez, or carried monocles on ribbons. There were one or two rather startling coiffures; and there were more neckties than I had ever seen brought together at any exclusively female ensemble. — Sarah Waters

There are gays and lesbians in every country, so there should be no discrimination against them just because of their destiny. — Hun Sen

People sat in small groups, talking about the other small groups that were just out of earshot. My ex and the dancer made a brief appearance, but I held my head high. I was wearing my best Gap turtleneck and my dates were two adult lesbians, so yeah, I was pretty cool. — Tina Fey

When I meet gay men anywhere in the world, there is a spontaneity and a spirit of fun and mischief that lesbians seem incapable of. — Camille Paglia

I made sure we fucked whenever the conversations got too emotional or too long - we weren't lesbians, after all. — Manil Suri

Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas - none of them bother me. I don't care what banner they raise. But what I can't stand are hollow people. When I'm with them I just can't bare it, and wind up saying things I shouldn't. — Haruki Murakami

One problem that I kept in mind was that in avoiding the BODY BEAUTIFUL as exhibited in the pseudo-lesbians of David Hamilton or J. Frederick Smith, I ran the risk of reinforcing negative myths, i.e. that lesbians are women who cannot attract men because they do not conform to society's standard of beauty. — Tee Corinne

It was protective, on her side; sprang from a sense of being in league together, a presentiment of something that was bound to part them (they spoke of marriage always as a catastrophe), which led to this chivalry, this protective feeling which was much more on her side than Sally's. — Virginia Woolf

We were unable to obtain any lesbians, Pomeroy says, as though perhaps they hadn't been in season, or his paperwork wasn't in order.) — Mary Roach

No country should deny people their rights because of who they love, which is why we must stand up for the rights of gays and lesbians everywhere. — Barack Obama

You know, I'm gonna marry a girl just to piss you off."
Mom laughed. "Then you'll deserve estrogen-fuelled psychotic rants about shoes and cellulite."
"Isn't that a little stereotypical?"
"Of course it is," Mom said nonchalantly. "Just like saying all gay men love cock and lesbians love to munch clams. — N.R. Walker

Gays and lesbians began to gain civil rights when Americans realized that their brothers, cousins, daughters were gay. — Nicholas Kristof

The secret subversive goal of my work is to show that women, not just lesbians, are regular human beings. — Alison Bechdel

We have the history of slavery or inequality to women, and now the civil rights movement of the 21st century is the struggle for equality for the gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people. And I think it's important for Americans to know about the times that we failed. — George Takei

[Gays and lesbians should be] Punished, in fact, killed. The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing. — Ali Al-Sistani

I have heard it said - usually behind my back - that Black Lesbians are not normal. But what is normal in this deranged society by which we are all trapped? I remember, and so do many of you, when being Black was considered not normal, when they talked about us in whispers, tried to paint us, lynch us, bleach us, ignore us, pretend we did not exist. We called that racism.
I have heard it said that Black Lesbians are a threat to the Black family. But when 50 percent of children born to Black women are born out of wedlock, and 30 percent of all Black families are headed by women without husbands, we need to broaden and redefine what we mean by family.
I have heard it said that Black Lesbians will mean the death of the race. Yet Black Lesbians bear children in exactly the same way other women bear children, and a Lesbian household is simply another kind of family. Ask my son and daughter. — Audre Lorde

Is Lisa going to the prom?'
I shelved my worries for the moment. 'I don't know, Mom. We don't talk about the You-Know-What. We made a pact.'
You could go together, if you didn't want to mess with dates and things.'
I don't want to mess with the prom at all, Mom.'
She ignored me, placidly eating popcorn, piece by piece.'Some girls in my high school class did that and had a wonderful time. They weren't lesbians or anything. Not that it would matter if they were.'
That's nice, Mom. I'm glad you're so open-minded.' I grabbed my Coke and the popcorn bowl and headed for the stairs, because I could go my whole life without ever hearing my mother talk about lesbians again.
Maybe you could take Justin to the prom,' she called after me, laughter in her voice. 'He is such a hottie.'
Shoot me now. — Rosemary Clement-Moore

The move to render the presence of lesbians and gay men invisible in the intricate fabric of Black existence and survival is a move which contributes to fragmentation and weakness in the Black community. — Audre Lorde