WE ARE NOW GET THE L OUT UK!!!
As lesbian feminists, we aspire to be truly internationalists and foster lesbians’ solidarity and unity across borders. Thanks to Get The L Out Korea and to the many individual Korean lesbian feminists who have been using the hashtag #getthelout, we have realised that the name of our activist group and Facebook page, “Get The L Out”, needs to be changed to “Get The L Out UK to reflect the truth: Get The L Out as an idea and political movement does not belong exclusively to the UK.
Lesbians from many countries in Europe, East Asia, South America and North America are organising with this slogan, and us Get The L Out UK need to drop the universal term “Get The L Out” to acknowledge this work and respect lesbians’ self-determination and autonomy across the world.
We hope that there will be more and more national Get The L Out and we will be very happy to be in touch and provide support.
Special thanks to lesbians in Korea, Serbia, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Brazil for being so strong and inspiring, we are learning a lot from what you are doing.
Get The L Out UK
Other Get The L Out groups (NB: we are fully autonomous and separate groups):
Get The L Out Spain (online): Facebook
Get The L Out Sweden (online): Facebook and Twitter
Get The L Out Asia (online): Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
Get The L Out Korea (IRL event on 14/09/2020):
Tag: lesbianerasure
Get The L Out UK at Women’s Liberation 2020 – Liane
Get The L Out UK held a workshop at the conference Women’s Liberation 2020 in London (01/02/2020). Thank you Woman’s Place UK for organising such an event and providing a platform to lesbian radical feminist activists. The title of this women-only workshop was “Lesbians in a straight world: Lesbian erasure and visibility”. Our main speakers were Maji, Liane T, and Charlie Evans. Angela C. Wild and Sarah chaired and introduced the workshop. Below is the transcript of Liane’s speech. Credit to Louise S. for the above picture.
As far as I remember I always liked girls – and I never was attracted to boys. All the girls loved me, they used to say to me: “if you were a boy I would go out with you”. They all wanted to cuddle with me. I was depressed that I wasn’t a “boy”. I used to think there was something wrong with me.
There was absolutely no pressure in my family for us children to conform to stereotypical gender roles, no “girls’” toys were enforced on me. Before puberty I had no problem with my body. At the age of 10-11 I used to run around topless, playing with the boys, like a “boy”.
As my period were not coming and I had no breast I was not sure they would ever come, I thought maybe I WAS a “boy”. Maybe there WAS something wrong with me. When I had my period I was very proud. I was very proud to become a WOMAN.
But then came my breasts. I realised I had to wear a bikini costume to go swimming and couldn’t run topless anymore. It made me really depressed. I couldn’t play with the boys anymore, I was expelled from football at that age because there was only a boys’ team and no girls’ team. Football was my life. It was heart-breaking. Before my breast came I used to look like a “boy”, not like a “girl”. This gave me some power in my friends’ group. I was physically active, always climbing trees, playing football and so on, and leading my group of friends – who were mainly boys. When my breasts arrived, all this stopped, my life changed.
I felt sexualised, objectified, and vulnerable for the first time. From the age of 12 until the age of 15 I felt deeply uncomfortable with my female body because of this. I used to have fantasies that if I laid in the sun, cover my body but leave my breasts out the sun would burn them.
At 15, I changed school. My friend circle changed as well. I started to come in contact with the women’s movement and women involved in it. Some lesbians were out in my school. I started to feel more comfortable with myself. I was already active in the squatting movement, occupying building that sort of thing. Loads of lesbians were involved in this kind of activism then. At 17, I left home and lived in an alternative house share of several people including a lesbian. She became a close friend. This is how I got in the women’s movement.
In those days in Germany – and it was similar in the UK – we had women’s centers, women’s bookshops, women’s cafes, women’s disco, were we would hang out and meet each other. There was a woman culture and lesbians were central in that culture. Lesbians were everywhere. We were very visible. We had lesbian consciousness-raising groups and discussions. It was so important being in constant contact with lesbians like me and share our experiences. Their presence validated mine, their stories made sense to me.
I came from a religious background and was always against the church, even as a child. When I spoke about this in my group, I was advised to read Mary Daly’s book Gyn/Ecology, which had then just been translated into German. I was 17 then, and suddenly my life made complete sense, everything fitted. I realised what patriarchy meant. I knew there was nothing wrong with me. I also felt strongly that there was something seriously wrong with everyone else: society. My lesbianism made sense in that political context.
I was able to be comfortable in my life and in my own body because of the strong presence of lesbians around me. I was able to understand lesbianism politically because I was raised in the women’s movement and the understanding that lesbianism is political was obvious, always present.
A couple of month ago I attended the Detransition Advocacy Network launch in Manchester and heard the testimonies of the “detransitioned” women speaking there. All of them were lesbians. Their stories was mine in my early years, their hatred of their bodies, their confusion about being female because they didn’t fit sexist stereotypes and loved women. I identified with all of it. I felt strongly connected to their lives and how they felt about their bodies. I was horrified at what had happened to them.
If I hadn’t been born and raised in the middle of the women’s movement with lesbians all around me, if the trans ideology had been around in my days there is no doubt that I would have been a victim of this ideology and might have thought of myself as “trans”. Many lesbians of my generation feel that same connection to young lesbians who feel pressure to “transition”, have “transitioned” or are “detransitioning”
This is why we at Get The L Out UK do what we do, because lesbian visibility help lesbians everywhere.
Get The L Out UK at FiLiA Conference 2019 – What is the Cotton Ceiling – Angela Wild
Get The L Out UK was present on two levels at FiLiA Conference in Bradford (19th and 20th October 2019): Angela Wild spoke at the Violence against Lesbians panel and several Get The L Out UK organisers and sympathisers were involved in the security team led by Liane. Thank you FiLiA for providing a platform to lesbian radical feminist activists.
Angela presented transgenderism’s violence against lesbians in a talk outlining the main ideological and political underpinnings of the “Cotton Ceiling” as part of the latest version of rape culture against lesbians within trans, queer, and gay communities [see the video of her talk above]
The panel also included Susan Hawthorne, Consuelo Rivera Fuentes, and Hilary McCollum. The recording of the whole session is available here.
Angela had previously took part in a FiLiA podcast in which she talks about lesbianism, radical feminism, motherhood, anti-racism, and other important feminist issues.
As Claire Heuchan wrote in AfterEllen, “each panelist took the discussion about violence against lesbians in a different direction. This mosaic of women’s perspectives builds an extraordinary picture. There is the sorrow of life in a world where violence against lesbians is endemic. And there is the magic of women uniting, resisting, building our own platforms and communities”.
On the same day, the security team had to deal with a handful of transactivists [picture right below] who protested the Conference for a few hours outside of the venue.
Pictures of some women of the security team and Get The L Out UK activists and sympathisers
Lesbian Visibility at Bradford Pride 2019
A group of lesbians went to Bradford Pride (01/06/2019) to show some lesbian visibility.
They carried signs such as « Lesbians don’t have penises », Lesbian = female homosexual », and « Lesbian Pride – Stormé Stonewall `69 ».
In a statement, one of the participants says:
« We had decided to meet in a coffee shop before going into the square. Whilst sat drinking coffee we were approached by two police officers from West Yorkshire Police. They explained that someone had come to them and said that they’d seen some placards and so they wanted to make sure that there was nothing derogatory and that we were not a hate group »
During the parade, they stood with placards on the side of the parade. Young lesbians approached them for a picture and a group of gay men and a few male transactivists later came and talked loudly at the peaceful lesbians while hiding lesbian visibility signs with their bodies and trans flags.
Media coverage:
Lesbian protesters at Bradford Pride claim police asked if they were a ‘hate group’
They handed out flyers:
