Last weekend, droves of individuals descended on a 15-acre park in northeast Los Angeles for a day of picnicking, mingling, cheering on drag performances and a pet costume competitors, and extra.
Known as Dyke Day LA, this annual Pride gathering takes a homespun strategy to a month usually full of corporate-sponsored events, parades and live shows; one organizer estimated the gang at about 1,500. Since its first iteration in 2007, it has gone from a scrappy Eastside various to the spectacle of West Hollywood’s Pride celebrations to a vital — if unofficial — occasion on town’s Pride calendar, open to “dykes of all genders.” (According to the organizers, which means everybody however cisgender males.)
The identify asserts that a time period as soon as broadly taken as a misogynistic and homophobic slur will be seen as a constructive, liberating label. However, attendees had been cut up, largely alongside generational traces, about whether or not the phrase “dyke” suited the second, when labels like “nonbinary” and “genderqueer” are used to affirm identities which can be extra fluid.
“‘Dyke’ is not our generation’s name to reclaim,” mentioned Melanie Marx, 31. “I feel like we’ve reclaimed ‘queer,’ and it’s far more inclusive.”
Several folks of their 40s, 50s and 60s spoke of the phrase with affection. “I’ve always identified as a dyke,” mentioned Tristan Taormino, 51, a feminist writer and intercourse educator. “To me it’s a politicized identity. It’s not just about who I love and have sex with, but my culture, my point of view, my politics. It’s an absolute reclamation.”
This 12 months’s Dyke Day, held for the primary time in individual because the pandemic started and as laws is advancing across the United States that might curb the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. folks, felt each celebratory and politically defiant. Under a cover of tree leaves and rainbow balloons in Sycamore Grove Park, attendees ate ice cream sandwiches, sipped selfmade cocktails, took naps, performed backgammon, petted one another’s canines, met one another’s pandemic infants (“I got it from my moms,” learn a toddler’s T-shirt) and swapped numbers. Everyone was glowing with glitter and risk and in addition beads of sweat.
Leola Davis, 37, an aesthetician in Sherman Oaks who makes a speciality of post-operation remedies for folks recovering from mastectomies referred to as high surgical procedure (she goes by @thelezthetician on Instagram), was excited to be again at Dyke Day after the pandemic hiatus. “There are no events in Los Angeles where you can see this many queer people at once, so it’s amazing for cruising,” she mentioned.
Hannah Einbinder, the 27-year-old comic and “Hacks” star, mentioned, “There are very few centralized areas or bars or restaurants that are dedicated to queer femmes or non-cis male queers, so it’s nice to be here.” She added that it was “rare” to seek out this type of scene in Los Angeles.
Mekleit Dix, a 25-year-old researcher who splits her time between New York and Los Angeles, mentioned that Dyke Day was a welcome counterpoint to to the closely branded hubbub in West Hollywood. “I think the sense of programming there is like: ‘It gets better, that’s why we’re partnering with JPMorgan Chase,’” she mentioned.
Dyke Day, by comparability, is staunchly anti-corporate. In tents dotting the park, there have been workshops on B.D.S.M. and different types of kink; demonstrations of how you can administer Narcan, a nasal spray, to reverse an opioid overdose; and assets for gender-inclusive well being care. Elsewhere, artists recorded oral histories from patrons of lesbian bars that had closed between 1925 and 2005. American Sign Language interpreters and accessible paths ensured that each one in attendance would really feel welcome.
There had been loads of newcomers and allies within the crowd. “I’m just happy to be here with all my girls,” mentioned the musician Lana Del Rey. “We have the best girls in town right here.”
Dyke Day follows a lineage of grass-roots Pride gatherings which have aimed to middle individuals who determine as femme, together with the primary Dyke March, in 1993, in Washington, D.C., adopted by New York the identical 12 months. Dyke Day LA, run by a nonprofit, is free and welcomes attendees of all ages. (For the youngsters in attendance this 12 months, there was face-painting, a bounce home and an inflatable slide.)
Marissa Marqusee, a nurse who manages the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Audre Lorde Health Program and sits on Dyke Day’s planning committee, mentioned it was essential to the organizers to create an inclusive surroundings.
“We wanted the committee to be representative of the people who attend Dyke Day,” mentioned Mx. Marqusee, who’s transgender and nonbinary. “That means Black, brown, Indigenous, people of color. Queer and trans people. Service providers of all different backgrounds.”
“It’s like dyke Christmas,” mentioned Lynn Ballen, a Dyke Day LA organizer and board member. She famous that, “traditionally, Pride events come out of a history that is more gay men, more cis, more white.” She and her fellow organizers had been seeking to foster a extra various and inclusive surroundings.
That context, together with the growth of gender identities, has formed some folks’s emotions concerning the phrase “dyke.”
“I’m a dyke, and in the ’90s, when I was a teenager, I was closeted,” mentioned Romy Hoffman, a 42-year-old musician from Sydney, Australia. “I was into grunge, the Riot Grrrl stuff. I was discovering queer cinema. The word ‘dyke’ definitely represents that period of time, but I don’t know if it has been adapted to the age of queerness.”
Some favor completely different terminology altogether. “I’m kind of old school and identify with ‘lesbian,’ personally,” mentioned Ann Engel, 59, a therapist in Palm Springs.
“I grew up hearing people call women ‘marimacha.’ I understood it to mean, like, ‘butch woman,’” mentioned Salvador de La Torre, 32, who’s transgender and grew up on the Texas border. “It’s definitely derogatory and can be used as an insult, depending on the context.”
They mentioned that the time period continued to resonate with them. “Even though now I’m not a woman — I was socialized as one and I was assigned female at birth — I’ll always be fond of that association, and love the word ‘dyke,’” they mentioned.
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