If homosexuality is a disease, lets all call in queer to work 'Hello. Can't work today, still queer'."
--- by Robin Tyler

"We're invisible, we're like stealth lesbians, low-flying and undetectable. Well if they can't see us, then let's do whatever the hell we want."
--- by Kate Clinton

"I don't think of them as lesbian supervisors, I think of them as county supervisors who happen to be lesbians. A lesbian supervisor would have a very different job: 'Hey you, cut those nails before you hurt somebody.'"
--- by Marga Gomez (on lesbians in local government)

"Being a lesbian is a daily struggle for me. As a woman who so highly revers other women...my wife as a lover and life partner, my friends as spiritual confidants, it is hard for me to resist the urge to simply retreat into the lesbian community, leaving this white, Christian, heterosexual, male dominated society to wollow in its own inherent sorrows. Yet it is here that I must exist for it is only from this place that I can truly make any positive change in the hate-filled 'morals' of our society used to degrade, defile, and devalue all of us...as citizens, as members of individual communities, and, most importantly, as human beings. It is here that I lost my civil rights so it MUST be here that I find my pride!"
--- by Beverly Greene on 3-3-98

"Beginning in the 1950's, lesbian novels became peopled by women who fit the traditional standard of feminine beauty to an almost absurd degree (as is indicated by the profusion of references to 'perfect full breats' and 'slim thighs'!) and the image of the beautiful feminine lesbian is still very prevalent in lesbian wirting. One reason for the prevalence of this image was that the writers were trying to win acceptance from a heterosexual audience with a 'we're real women too' approach, denying anything they might have in common with 'overweight, mannish bull dykes.'"
--- by Bobby Lacy in 1981

"There are a lot of lesbians who don't believe that they're oppressed. It's just that they aren't aware of their oppression."
--- by Ruth Simpson in 1971

"Womyn, it's that simple....
When dealing with a Disabled Lesbian, ask her what she needs from you. She lives with her disability and will be the best expert available."
--- by Rebecca Clare in 1982

"Learning about disability requires that you take the risk and associate with disabled lesbians. They will teach you the following: Deafness is not about not hearing, but about communication. Blindness is not about not seeing, but about mobility. Being in a wheelchair is not about an inability to move, but about accessibility. Being disabled is not the disabling condition, but the societal barriers excluding us from full participation in life."
--- by Rebecca Clare in 1982

"Sappho wrote only of one theme, sang it, laughed it, sighed it, wept it, sobbed it. Save for her knowledge of human love she was unlearned, save for her perception of beauty she was blind, save for the fullness of her passions she was empty-handed."
--- by Willa Cather (about Sappho) in 1895

"I was horrified to read that men are turned on by the peculiar unnaturalness of the walk of a woman in high heels. It excites them, it makes her butt move in a certain way, and it makes her helpless. She can't run, he feels so solid beside her. There are all kinds of ways that women who love men cripple themselves like that...Yes, Lesbianism and feminism are tied togehter."
--- by Alma Routsong (pseud. Isabel Miller) in 1975

"The mother and the lesbian are two polarized images on which male subjectivity has projected some of its deepest fears and hatred of women. The lesbian mother is a contradiction; she is not supposed to exist...her existence suggests that no woman, even one who has married and borne children, necessarily belongs to a man or men."
--- by Adrienne Rich in 1977

"Every Lesbian who isn't liberated has at least subconsciously internalized the knowledge that this society has called her inadequate and invalid and relegated her to a collective outlaw position of isolation and loneliness...for years the Lesbian bars have been our ONLY social alternative. The negative ghetto culture of the bars breeds alcoholism."
--- by Brenda Weathers (Director of the Women's Alcohol Recovery Program in 1975

"The bar has been the only place where lesbians can be lesbians with other people for so long that for many of us it has become an institution. In our heads, it still is the only place to go. And when one goes, one usually drinks, especially since the bar knows it has a captive clientele, and peddles its liquor with a heavy hand. The result - the modern tradegy of lesbian alcoholism. Not only are we oppressed by straight society, but we are also trapped by a subculture that condones drinking and further enslaved by an institution that definitely encourages it. We are caught in the web of gay bars, which unfortunately often is the only place to go."
--- by Kristi in 1975

"My fear with the Womyn's Communities I have experienced is that I have been asked to give up too much. My consciousness as a native womyn, a brown womyn, an indian, whose roots take me back to a different beginning than some of the womyn I share my life with, began when I was asked, in the name of womynhood to give up things that are a part of my womynmind, though perhaps not a part of theirs."
--- by Juana Maria Paz in 1979

"What is a Lesbian? A Lesbian is a woman who loves women, who counts on women for her emotional support, who looks to women for her growth, who finds her identity in her womanhood. A Lesbian is a woman who, more and more willingly, and with more and more pride, knows and shows her own strength, makes her own definitions for herself, and dares to defy society's most sacred taboo - 'Thou shalt not live without men and like it.'"
--- by Ginny Berson and Robin Brooks

"Racism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance.
Sexism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one sex and thereby the right to dominance.
Heterosexism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one pattern of loving and thereby its right to dominance.
Homophobia: The fear of feelings of love for members of one's own sex and therefore the hatred of those feelings in others.
The above forms of human blindness stem from the same root - the inability to recognize or tolerate the notion of difference as a beneficial and dynamic human force, and one which is enriching rather than threatening to the defined self."
--- by Audre Lorde in 1978

"Those of us who are lesbians have had to face the profound homophobia (hatred and fear of lesbians and homosexuals) of both Blacks and whites. Implicit in our communities' attitudes toward Black lesbians is the notion that they have transgressed sexual and racial norms. Despite all of the forces with which we must contend, Black women have a strong tradition of sexual self-determination."
--- by Beverly Smith in 1982

"We women are the best thing going - we are warm, passionate, we cry and we live! Let's celebrate!"
--- by Margaret Sloan-Hunter in 1974

"Homosexuals go through torturous soul-searching, deciding whether they should come out. Heterosexuals get announcements printed..."
--- by Beverly Smith in 1979

"There is no easy way to say why you still go on loving womyn, why all womyn whose eyes are strong turn you on, the way they raise their shiny arms on the dance floor in lesbian bars years later, dancing as if they were celebrating a victory in the war, when there is no victory except for the simple fact that they are dancing, throwing their heads back with the song."
--- by Elana Dykewomon in 1979

"What needs to be understood is that erotic love between women is not a deviation from some presumed 'normal'. The Lesbian, to use a designation with a honorable history, is not a spoiled, failed or diverted so-called heterosexual woman. Neither is she a pseudo-male frustrated within female flesh and bones - the few who feel so are frustrated by society's ignorance and persecution. She is from birth and perhaps prenatally an essentially different being with different needs and desires. She is constituted as she is because Nature made her so. After lifelong meditation on the matter, after observation and discussion with others who do not fit the crude male-female categories, plus wide reading, I will go a step further to say, Nature needs the Lesbian as she is. She needs me as I am."
--- by Elsa Gidlow in 1976

"For a woman to be a lesbian in a male-supremacist, capitalist, misogynist, racist, homophobic, imperialistic culture, such as that of North America, is an act of resistence."
--- by Cheryl Clarke in 1981

"The media is painting a picture that is becoming more oppressive as time goes on - oppressive to the truth about the movement among women, lesbians and gays, and people of color. We cannot and will not live without our lives, and we must make that message loud and clear, not only to the gatekeepers of the media who determine 'all the news that's fit to print,' but also to the readers who don't understand our fight and who must be educated so that we don't fight each other. The truth must be told, and we must take the responsibility to tell it - not only in our own publications and circles of friends, but also to the other people out there who lack the sophistication or knowledge to realize that what they hear and read is not the whole story."
--- by Rhonda K. Craven in 1982

"I think it's important to have more Lesbians and Gays visible in our society so people can see there is not an enormous difference between us and we don't have anything to fear from each other."
--- by Mary Morgan in 1981

"The development of social and sexual identity is taken for granted to be a crucial part of the pre-teen and teen years, and a large portion of children's and YA literature is devoted to this broad topic with the complacent assumption of a heterosexual orientation for everyone. This is, first of all, an unrealistic picture for the non-gay kids who will meet gay people in their homes, neighborhoods, and schools. It is also tremendously unfair to gay adolescents who are equally entitled to decent role models."
--- by Frances Hanckel in 1975

"What we didn't see was that we were all the same people we were before we came here and we brought the past, meaning the patriarchy, here with us. It will be a long and continuing process to purge ourselves of the culture we grew up in. Perhaps, it cannot even be done in our lifetime. Perhaps only our daughters, who will not learn the ways of men will be truly free."
--- by Juana Maria Paz in 1980

"...it is impossible to legislate human respect, but your action can provide the beginning of equal justice under the law. Differences cannot continue to be equated to criminality or to evil."
--- by E. Kitch Childs in 1973

"Being fat is wonderful. It is terrific. It is soft and warm, vulnerable and powerful. It is allowing yourself to contain the fullest shapes of the material world, the earth, the sky, the planets. It is being able to look at the picture of the volcano on the wall, the great domed mountain and the round billowing plumes of hot ash, while holding my huge breasts in my hands breathing deeply, and feeling that enormity run through me...That is just the beginning of what's terrific about it. I'm sure you have a hundred ideas of what's not so terrific about it, and your ideas, in fact, have created most of what's not so terrific about it. But we have had plenty of time for all of that."
--- by Elana Dykewomon in 1980

"We need Everyone to be strong, men and women. We need to be helping each other. I think that our lesbianism is very positive because it strengthens the overall movement."
--- by Barbara Noda in 1979

"Our daughters have us, for measure or rebellion or outline or dream; the sons of lesbians are trailblazers, having to make their own decisions of self as men. This is a position of both power and vulnerability, for the sons of lesbians have the advantage of our blueprints for survival, but they must take what we know and transpose it into their maleness."
--- by Audre Lorde in 1979

"Lesbians have taken all the patriarchal notions about appropriate bodies for women, discarded some superficial level ideas about 'ideal feminist beauty' and kept the rest. On top of what remains (which is a wealth of hatred for fat women, disabled women, women with any physical difference, and women of color) the lesbian community has added its 'ideal beauty' - the tough little Amazon."
--- by Judith Stein and ReaRae Sears in 1981

"Oh yes, I see those brown spots all over my face and hands. I feel the bones pushing against skin. I see the pores gaping open from age, exposure, and neglect. Twenty lines - wrinkles - go straight up and down my upper lip. Deep creases run around my nose and down around my mouth. Big, deep furrows between my bushy brows run up my forehead and cross lines that crowd across my brow....And yet, although my teeth are sort of yellow, I am beautiful. Gay liberation and the Women's movement taught me that."
--- by Kady in 1978

NOTE: Most of these quotes found by Janet S. Soule