63. Why The 'L' is First

A couple years ago I learned that there is a reason that the 'L' comes first in LGBTQ+ and I want to share that with you.Through much of the 20th century, "gay" served as an umbrella term, and early activist groupings often led with gay men, producing orderings like "GLB." The shift to placing "L" first took hold in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the United States, and it was a deliberate gesture of respect.

The most cited reason is the AIDS crisis. As the epidemic devastated gay male communities in the 1980s, lesbians showed up in enormous numbers as caregivers, nurses, blood donors, fundraisers, and organizers. Lesbians like those in the Blood Sisters of San Diego organized blood drives when gay and bisexual men were barred from donating. This solidarity reshaped the movement, and foregrounding the "L" became a way of acknowledging that labor and centering women who had frequently been rendered invisible within both gay male spaces and the broader feminist movement.

Lesbians were central to progress long before the acronym existed. The Daughters of Bilitis, founded in San Francisco in 1955, was the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the U.S. Figures such as Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon spent decades organizing. Lesbians were present at the 1969 Stonewall uprising and in the Gay Liberation Front that followed. Within 1970s feminism, lesbians pushed a frequently resistant women's movement to take their concerns seriously, even as Betty Friedan infamously dismissed them as the "lavender menace", a slur activists reclaimed in a celebrated protest.

Lesbians also did foundational work that benefited everyone: building community institutions, bookstores, health collectives, and mutual-aid networks; advancing lesbian feminist theory; and fighting for custody rights, anti-discrimination protections, and visibility at a time when being out could cost a woman her job and children.

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