Claiming Deviance and Honoring Community: Creating Resistant Spaces in U.S. Dyke Marches

The article explores how two dyke marches, Oakland's Sistahs Steppin' in Pride: An East Bay Dyke March and Festival and the New York City Dyke March, enacted alternative models of social relationships. It compares the predominantly black Sistahs Steppin' in Pride's reaffirmation of connections among queer women with the intentional performance of deviance by a white-dominated group in New York City's annual Dyke March, arguing that each event presented a viable, although divergent, paradigm for social interaction contesting heterosexual norms. The differences are particularly clear when comparing the ritualized evocation of community at Sistahs Steppin' in Pride with the New York City Dyke March's intentional performance of culturally transgressive sexuality and genders on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. While the New York City Dyke March fits easily within existing rubrics for understanding the transformative potential of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer) activism, Sistahs Steppin' in Pride presented a less recognized, but equally viable response to normative understandings of social interaction modeled on white heterosexual experiences.