A Very Gay Sunday

Pride Month has come to NYC and I don't know about any of you guys, but I intend to enjoy it to the fullest. I'm still not used to having events where I can celebrate being completely, unabashedly myself, but it's thoroughly freeing to be able to do so!

This past Sunday, the 10th, I attended not one, but two LGBT+ events to kick off my Pride Month. In the afternoon, I was on a private tour of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, which I had never been to before. And in the evening I met up with Sarah, and we attended a trivia competition with the Gay Geeks of New York at the LGBT Centre in Chelsea. (We didn't win but we made friends and had a lot of fun.)

And that's not all! I'm attending numerous LGBT events later this month as well, and if you're in the NYC area I strongly encourage you join me there!

The Lesbian Herstory Archives are just amazing. There's truly no better word to describe the place. From the outside, it just looks like a normal Park Slope brownstone, but as soon as you step inside you're overwhelmed with the sheer sense of community and love. This is an inclusive haven by lesbians for lesbians, and it made me feel so happy and lucky to be a lesbian myself. It's community-run, it invites anyone interested to come research regardless of their financial situation, and it gives back to the community in the form of various protests and charitable work.

The first floor of the Archives is filled wall-to-wall with bookshelves full of more books about lesbians than I have ever seen in one place. From 40s pulp novels to comics to modern acedemic theory to biographies about trans lesbians and lesbians of colour, these shelves were filled with everything. And the best part? It's free to peruse! I definitely plan to go back!

I was with a group of fellow lesbians from the NYC Dyke March facebook group, and our tour guide was an elder lesbian named Maxine Wolfe, who told us all about the history of the archives (It used to be in the private apartment of a lesbian couple in the seventies, but eventually community fundraising allowed them to purchase - not rent - their own space, and it has always aimed to be a community safe space) and showed us a video about the history of the Dyke March. She emphasized that this was a place for women and women-aligned folk who are "brave enough" (her inspiring words) to love other women and women aligned folk - those of us under the LGBT umbrella who are tired of being overshadowed by the G. (Nothing against my gay brothers but we need our own spaces too!)

One of many cozy reading nooks in the Archives

Lest you think this is just a library, they have more than just books. (Though me being a consummate bookworm, the books were enough to impress me, as was being in a room surrounded by lesbians!)

The collection truly is a massive archive - in fact it's the world's largest lesbian archive! (I know, this surprised/impressed me too!) In addition to all those books that I'm just dying to spend hours getting lost in, the archives collects unpublished papers, newsletters, zines, newspapers, photographs, audio tapes, CDs, DVDs, films, reference tools, artwork, t-shirts, protest banners, calenders, music, buttons... pretty much any lesbian material you could possibly imagine throughout lesbian history can be found here. And I don't just mean American lesbians either - upstairs there are files upon files upon files featuring lesbian materials from every country you can possibly think of, including some that no longer exist anymore. (More on that later).

The Archives is a grassroots organisation, and I feel I should make an aside here to explain some of their guidelines, as told to me by Maxine, who was just such a dear and inspiring woman:

• All lesbians have access to the Archives - no academic, political, or sexual credentials will be required for use of the collection, and race and class will not be a barrier to use it or be included within it.
• The Archives collects materials about all kinds of lesbians, not just the records of the famous, published, and otherwise privileged.
• The Archives will always be housed within the community, not on an academic campus that is by definition closed to many.
• The Archives will always be involved in the political struggles of all lesbians.
• The community will share in the work of the archives, and funding will be sought within the community, rather than from outside sources.

Inspiring, no?

Little did I know just how taken with emotion I would soon become.

As I said earlier, upstairs there is a collection of lesbian materials from all over the world, and I asked Maxine if I could look through the Poland file, as I am Polish. She said of course.

I wasn't expecting too much. I have a complicated relationship with my own Polish identity. The country's very culture resonates with me deeply and runs through my blood so much that I cannot possibly separate myself from it. For better or for worse, being Polish is an enormous part of who I am. But modern day Poland is an intensely Catholic, homophobic, conservative, patriarchal country. I wouldn't feel safe visiting as a non-Christian lesbian.

So imagine my shock when I lifted from the file a fierce Polish lesbian zine. Though my Polish is very bad, I was soon moved to tears as I thumbed through the pages. Knowing firsthand how difficult it is to be openly LGBT around conservative Poles, I could not help but admire how courageous and brave it was of these Polish lesbians to publish this.

Just seeing that other Polish lesbians could exist so openly - just feeling how powerful it was to bear witness to the intersection of 2 of my identities I'd previously thought incompatible - it was incredible. I'm a bit embarrassed by how emotional I got but Maxine assured me I was not the first lesbian to do so.

I'll be back, Lesbian Herstory Archives. I'll be back.

Some of the many well-deserved awards the Archives has won over the years

Later on I made my way into Chelsea to go to the LGBT Centre - or as many people call it, "The Centre" - to meet Sarah for Gay Geeks Trivia Night, an event I had found on facebook when a mutual friend of ours said he might go. (He did not go but we still had fun.)

My geekiness is a part of me I am slowly learning, after many years, to be proud of rather than embarrassed of. I was bullied for my geeky interests a lot growing up, so it's hard for me still to be able to just... be open about it like that. Sarah always has been able to, and I dunno, maybe I'm a little jealous of that even though I also admire it a lot about her.

So you can imagine how freeing it was to be able to sit in a room where it was considered cool to know a lot about various fandoms (in my case "Star Trek" and "Gravity Falls" and "Sailor Moon" and "The X-Files" and "Lord of the Rings"). We sat with one other girl, a nonbinary individual, and a gay couple, and dubbed ourselves "The Redshirts" - I even added a tiny Star Trek themed doodle to every single one of our trivia cards!

Even though we didn't win, we did come in second place, and we loved being around fellow LGBT+ geeks so much that we're already planning to go to their next trivia night in July!

Our final score - I earned us half a point for my silly doodles

Pride Month isn't even half over yet, though. I'll be at the following events, and if you're in NYC for Pride Month, I hope you'll come too:

• On Wednesday the 13th, I will be at a fundraising raffle at the Stonewall Inn (where the infamous 1969 gay rights protests began) from 8PM
• While I am not attending the big NYC Pride Parade, I will be marching in the Dyke March. (It's a protest, not a parade.)
• Sarah and I will be attending a post-parade Pride party with the Gay Geeks of NY at Gossip Restaurant on the evening of the 24th.

Wherever you are in the world, if you're some sort of LGBT+ and have a stripey flag to wave (and yes I am including aces in that statement), I hope you are having a wonderful Pride Month! And if you're straight, that's unfortunate but thank you for supporting your LGBT+ friends.

Be Proud, my lovelies!
-Nym