Dressing Dykes: Fashion as Activism
Activism is how we act, right? The things that we do to try and make the world better; perhaps the posts we boost online or the rallies we go to. How can fashion, or the clothes that we adorn our bodies with, make the world better? How can, more specifically, the fashion of lesbian or other queer communities be activism?
Imagine a rally, a protest, or a march. Protest banners or cardboard signs are held determinedly in the air, demanding change. Crowds chant a people’s manifesto that spells out the future with every echoed shout. Yet, for most of us, rallies or protests or marches are not the norm. They are an extreme, a reaction to an outrage, rather than activism that exists in the everyday. Our clothes, however, which we wear day in and day out, exist in the everyday. No wonder then, that they’ve so often been turned into protest banners themselves. In queer archives around the world - official institutions and personal wardrobes both - rest t-shirts and badges that once demanded queer liberation. While now they are quiet, once they took to the streets on angry queer bodies. Some of them still do.
Last Summer, I visited the LAIC archive at Glasgow Women’s Library - LAIC stands for Lesbian Archive and Information Centre, a collection that was once housed in London and holds lesbian t-shirts, pamplets, banners, magazines and ephemera from both sides of the lesbian sex wars (which were the focus of my last column). The archive, now housed in Glasgow, has come to be known as simply the “lesbian archive”. When I visited, as a lesbian fashion historian, I was looking specifically for lesbian slogan t-shirts.
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“Dyke” t-shirt, no date. LAIC t-shirt collection, Glasgow Women’s Library. Photograph by the author, August 2021.
One example that I found was bright orange, printed with the word “DYKE” in all caps, which sprawled across the t-shirt’s chest. I don’t know who wore it, or where, or when. What I know is that however did (and whoever made it, probably by screenprinting the word onto the fabric themselves) wanted to be seen. They wanted to be seen as a lesbian in a world where being a lesbian is far from always accepted, especially before the 2000s when this t-shirt was likely printed. More than that, though, they wanted to label themselves as “DYKE” to the world around them.
The word dyke is, obviously, a slur. Its roots aren’t clear, but there’s a possibility that it originated from “Boudicca” as a reference to strong-willed, warrior women, or that it came from the geographical term “dyke”: a valley carved out of the landscape, such as Devil’s Dyke near Brighton, which implies a sort of lack. To be a lesbian and to claim the word back is a powerful act. To wear it sprawled across your own rib cage and take to the streets is a refusal. T-shirts like the bright orange one folded so neatly away in Glasgow were made and worn as an act of lesbian activism, reminding the world at large that yes, the dykes are here, and what are you going to do about it? Throw a slur at me?
The “DYKE” t-shirt is loud, but activism in lesbian and queer fashion is sometimes more subtle: a badge, for example. Above is a photograph of a selection of badges on display at Brighton Museum’s Queer the Pier exhibition, most of which related to gay male culture and community in the city. Some of the badges included are representative of others from the 1970s through to the 90s, which - like the “DYKE” t-shirt, but on a physically smaller scale - aimed to assert a presence and a heritage. One badge reads “LESBIAN & GAY PRIDE 1990”, with an accompanying pattern of pink triangles (a queer symbol that was reclaimed decades after its initial use in Nazi Germany to classify and stigmatise homosexuality). Badges like this are activism in their own way, in that anyone who sees them is reminded that gays, lesbians, and anyone else in the LGBTQ community exist loudly and proudly.
“Yes, the dykes are here, and what are you going to do about it? Throw a slur at me?”
Other badges, like the yellow badge which reads “FIGHT AIDS, NOT PEOPLE WITH AIDS or HIV” have a clear goal and message. This phrase is undoubtedly one that would also have appeared on literal banners and placards at marches and protests. To wear it on your body, however, to pin it to a jacket like a crest on a suit of armour is to carry that message with you constantly. Consider the phrase “badge of allegiance”, and what allegiance queer badges like this are staking. In the 90s, they were combating the prejudice against people with AIDS and HIV. Today, it’s more often messages like “fuck transphobia” or maybe a pronoun bage that are affixed to coats or tote bags.
Campaign badges worn by marchers across the South East, c. 1980s, on loan from local Brightonian and queer collector, Alf Le Flohic. Queer the Pier, Brighton Museum.
Trans activism in queer fashion is everywhere right now because trans lives are so viciously being targeted every day. It is not only trans people that are adorning their bodies like a protest banner, though, but all kinds of people within (and sometimes outside of) the LGBTQ community. Another t-shirt that I found while digging through boxes at Glasgow Women’s Library is the one captured in the image above. “QUEERS AGAINST THE BATHROOM BILL”, it shouts in reference to the North American “Bathroom Bill” that aimed to deny trans people access to public restrooms of their correct gender, a bill that has been debated and protested outside of America itself.
The t-shirt was designed by a Glasgow Women’s Library volunteer in 2017, Bel Pye, who was inspired imagery that they’d found on badges and pamphlets in the lesbian archive. They combined lesbian imagery like the labrys (a double headed axe that was the most popular lesbian symbol in the late twentieth century) with a protest slogan against transgender discrimination. This is lesbian fashion and lesbian history, queer activism and queer fashion. When our fashion is activism, it strengthens our community. Lesbian fashion is a tool for self-expression; for activism; for solidarity.
These garments and accessories are “fashion” just as much as runway couture. We have been wearing clothes and accessories like these, in queer culture, for so long that they are as much a fashion staple as a little black dress or a trenchcoat is in the mainstream. Queer fashion (and lesbian fashion) is activism more often than it is not. We are so often asserting our place in the world, whether by codes that only our community might pick up on, or with message-based fashion that tells heteronormative culture to back off. So much of lesbian and feminist theory is based in the idea that “the personal is political” - and when it comes to the clothes that we wear, that statement rings true once more.
Words: Ellie Medhurst
