I IN 1988, a headline ran in the UK news: “Beeb Man Sits on Lesbian.” I was four years old and living in a small house on a dead-end road in North Yorkshire with my parents and younger brother, one year away from starting school. The comedic headline referred to a gutsy, brilliant piece of direct action in which a group of dykes infiltrated the BBC building and chained themselves to news desks to protest Section 28, which prohibited the “promotion” of homosexuality. During the 6 o’clock news on 23 May 1988, broadcasters Sue Lawley and Nicholas Witchell were interrupted by protesters padlocked to their desks shouting “Stop the Clause” and “Stop Section 28.” I have no idea whether my parents saw this, or whether they had any idea about the protests happening in London. But Section 28 went into effect in Thatcher’s Britain in May 1988, and it lasted fifteen years—ending the year after I finished my A-Level Exams, when I left my small Yorkshire town for a bigger Yorkshire city. My entire school life was spent under Section 28, which might go some way toward explaining why I had no idea that there were gangs of dykes chaining themselves to news desks, starting up S/M clubs, protesting nuclear weapons, fucking each other in public, or playing in bands. Section 28 was so effective that I, a closeted adolescent dyke, didn’t even know it existed until it was over. II I HAD A VISCERAL REACTIONtoRebel Dykes, a long-awaited documentary directed by Harri Shanahan and Sîan Williams about a group of punk dykes in 1980s London. I think about how different my life, and the lives of many queer people my age, might have been different if we’d had ready access to this recent history as teens, to the fact that rebel dykes existed in a tangible sense. When I first moved to London in 2008, I started reading Jaime Hernandez’ Love & Rockets comics and fell in love with Hopey Glass, a riotous, openly queer punk with excellent hair and a love of leather boots and booze. After spending time with lesbians that I liked very much but felt apart from, Hopey was the closest I had come to being able to define my sexuality, my gender, my restlessness. Like Hopey, I wanted to be drunk constantly, to watch bands, to stay up all night having sex. I wanted to have Hopey’s unwavering confidence. The fact she was created ESSAY Rebel Dykes Took On All Foes JENNTHOMPSON Jenn Thompson is a publisher and editor at Cipher Press, a queer independent publishing house based in the UK, and a writer for Club des Femmes. by a cisgender straight man did not escape me, but Hopey was a real lifesaver for me in so many ways. Years later, watchingRebel Dykes, here were our own homegrown versions of Hopey: same clothes, same haircuts, same radical (mis)behaviors. III REBEL DYKES HAS BEENyears in the making; I saw a preview at BFI Flare, London’s LGBT film festival, in 2016. The energy at the screening was wild and beautiful, and it was joyful to be there among so many older dykes, still wearing leather, still as unruly as ever. The atmosphere was electric: it was the same comfortable anarchy that pervades the documentary. You may look at a gang of dykes in leather and see trouble; I look at a gang of dykes in leather and see safety. I mention the screening becauseRebel Dykes is a film about togetherness, about chosen family. It follows a group of lesbians who meet at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in the early 1980s. Someone should make a spinoff film about Greenham, which consisted of a number of different camps of women and seems like the best lesbian party of all time. There was a camp for musicians, a camp for separatists, a camp for punks. Little dykes were spending weekends at Greenham and then going home Sunday night for school on Monday. There was witchy sex in misty woodland. There was a lot of drinking and mischief. From this environment evolved queer family in the form of rebel dykes, a subculture rallying against Thatcherism, homophobia, racism, gender inequality, misogyny, and warfare— and having a lot of anarchic fun doing it. Watching the preview surrounded by the dykes that were part of it, I could see how close they’ve remained, how they’re still family despite having gone their separate ways. Thinking about that screening now after another lengthy Covid lockdown gives me a little gut twist. So many of us have been separated from our queer families for so long now, having gone through not only a pandemic but the spectacle of virulent transphobia, institutional racism, sexual violence, abuse of police power. We’ve watched this horror unfold from screens in our individual homes, the most vulnerable among us unable to join protests, which (when they happen) are broken up with violence. We’re not able to come together in pubs or kitchens or clubs as we did before, to decompress and find comfort in one another. It’s strange watching a film so much about togetherness, when togetherness feels so alien. IV I MOVED TO LONDON in 2007, a few years before all the bars started shutting down. I got here in time for the last gasps of the Rebel dykes was a subculture rallying against Thatcherism, homophobia, racism, gender inequality, misogyny, and warfare. 20 The G&LR
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