Reclaiming Queer: Activist and Academic Rhetorics of Resistance

3. Visibility with a Vengeance: The Lesbian Avengers and Lesbian Chic

3 Visibility with a Vengeance the lesbian avengers and lesbian chic The Avengers may be media darlings, but they are not the darlings of every queer. —Shaila Dewan, “15 Minutes of Flame,” 68 On the first day of school in 1992, children arriving at the conservative District 24 elementary school in Queens, New York, were greeted by a festive morning celebration: a marching band in kilts played jaunty music while women clad in “I Was a Lesbian Child” T-shirts held a giant pink banner and handed out lavender balloons that instructed children to “Ask About Lesbian Lives.” The band, banners, and balloons were courtesy of the Lesbian Avengers, a new lesbian activist group who was protesting the District 24 school board’s opposition to the proposed “Children of the Rainbow” curriculum manual, which would recognize gay and lesbian families. By targeting an elementary school and interacting with children, the group clearly made a politically volatile choice. As Sarah Schulman, a founding member of the Lesbian Avengers explains, “we were willing to confront the greatest taboo in the culture—homosexuals in the school yard. . . . It focused our work directly on the right wing, and established a new tone for lesbian politics.”1 The “Rainbow” curriculum was the Lesbian Avengers’ first major issue, and the cheerful character of the District 24 demonstration brilliantly materialized the Avengers’ commitment to making their actions fun and entertaining and to promoting a form of activism that did not take itself too seriously. Within the first two years of the founding of their inaugural chapter, over visibility with a vengeance 91 thirty more chapters of the Avengers sprung up across the United States and internationally; a total of over sixty chapters have been documented worldwide .2 The majority of chapters were most active between 1992 and 1995, with a few lasting into the late 1990s. Nonhierarchical and noncentralized, each chapter made its own decisions about which issues to tackle, including problems such as the violent murders of lesbians and gay men, domestic violence, homophobic threats, the ban on lesbians and gays in the military, and antigay referenda on ballots in several states. Chapters were consistent, however, in avoiding what they called “old stale tactics” in favor of more daring, creative, and spectacular modes of demonstrating. Lesbian Avenger flyers, posters, and broadsheets—always marked with their signature cartoon bomb with a lit fuse and their motto, “we recruit”—typically mixed defiant statements of lesbian power with popular culture images, clever commentary, and sexy innuendoes.3 A poster for a Valentine’s Day demonstration, for instance, proclaims , “Valentines aren’t just for hets and Hallmark. Dykes of New York City UNITE!” It then urges women to join in “the frenzied culmination of a day of rampant public lesbianism . . . waltzing enthusiastically encouraged.” Even the Avengers’ fundraising activities emphasized fun and sex: rather than applying for grant money, their primary fundraisers were “wild, creative, insane parties,” which sometimes featured go-go dancers, “licentious party games,” and, as one poster advertised, “scantily clad Avengers in petal garb.”4 The Avengers understood the goal of such fundraising parties to be not only earning money for their group but also providing a night of entertainment for the lesbian community. The Lesbian Avengers’ preference for performative demonstrations, eye-catching graphics, and the force of spectacle was common in much of the queer activism of this period. As Ann Cvetkovich points out, many members of the Avengers had been involved with ACT UP, and “they borrow its style of activism, including its sense of style as activism.”5 But even as the Avengers took on serious issues, they also had “an affinity for the comic” and sought to maintain a sexy, playful, ironic tone. Credence Fogo reports that “while ACT UP and Queer Nation are original and imaginative (at least they were in the beginning), their actions tend to be of the lying-down-in-the-street-andyelling variety. The Avengers, on the other hand, personalize their attacks, injecting doses of humor and joy.”6 Nonetheless, the Avengers shared with ACT UP, Queer Nation, and other queer activist groups a commitment to the transformative energy of activists’ 92 chapter three anger and pride and to “visibility politics,” or the importance of visibility to cultural transformation. According to Dan Brouwer, visibility politics “might be defined as theory and practice which assume that ‘being seen’ and ‘being heard’ are beneficial and often crucial for individuals...