Poet and activist Judy Grahn (b. 1940) helped found Gay Women’s Liberation in 1969. At age 20, she joined the Air Force because she was “starving,” but was “dishonorably discharged for homosexuality.” In her interview with NPR, she refers to this experience as what radicalized her. After participating in D.C. Mattachine Society, she and her partner moved to SF in 1968. They organized with the SFSU Third World Strike, Black Panther Party, and People’s Park. 

In my research, it was extremely difficult to find information about Gay Women’s Liberation (GWL). Even photos are nowhere to be found on Google or in underground publications like Gay Sunshine. Even Grahn’s memoir, which probably contains the most information about GWL, is not available to the public for free. I wanted to provide a historical overview of the group, but primary and secondary evidence is behind the gates of historical societies’ archives. To access them, one must go in person, pay, have a personal recommendation, etc. This outbreak of Coronavirus terminated any possibility to access the archival materials desired.

One of her poems was published in the Women’s Liberation magazine called It Ain’t Me, Babe. She had a complicated, painful relationship with her mother, who was prescribed psychotics throughout Grahn’s young life. Her mother was not psychotic, but a lesbian. Once both mother and daughter came out, their relationship changed based on their individual experiences with sexuality.

 

PSYCHOTIC A History of Lesbianism How they came into the world, the women-loving-women came in three by three and four by four the women-loving-women came in ten by ten and ten by ten again until there were more than you could count they took care of each other the best they knew how and of each other's children, if they had any. How they lived in the world, the women-loving-women learned as much as they were allowed and walked and wore their clothes the way they liked whenever they could. They did whatever they knew to be happy or free and worked and worked and worked. The women-loving-women in America were called dykes and some liked it  and some did not. they made love to each other the best they knew how and for the best reasons How they went out of the world, the women-loving-women went out one by one having withstood greater and lesser trials, and much hatred from other people, they went out one by one, each having tried in her own way to overthrow the rule of men over women, they tried it one by one and hundred by hundred, until each came in her own way to the end of her life and died. The subject of lesbianism is very ordinary; it’s the question of male domination that makes everybody angry. --Judy Grahn

 

 

The Women’s Press Collective (originally called the Oakland Women’s Press Collective), another foundational entity founded by a group of activist, artistic and multi-cultural dykes, who were also friends, lovers and ex-lovers, occupied the basement of A Woman’s Place Bookstore, publishing and distributing what would become some of the most influential publications of that time by some of the most innovative authors, many of them also members of the collective. Judy Grahn’s Edward the Dyke and Other Poems was the first publication of the Press Collective, illustrated by Wendy Cadden, artist, activist, and lover of Grahn. They were both some of the founders of the collective.