About Jamie

Lavender You was inspired by the Lavender Menace movement, a group of lesbians who protested their exclusion from mainstream feminism in the 1970s. 

According to the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, women from the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and other feminist groups hijacked the Second Congress to Unite Women in New York City. They called this action “Lavender Menace” and demanded, in front of hundreds of women, that the National Organization of Women (NOW) accept lesbianism as an integral part of the women’s liberation movement. 

The name “Lavender Menace” was reclaimed as a defiant reference to anti-lesbian comments from NOW leaders. For example, NOW President Betty Friedan referred to lesbians as the “lavender menace” in 1969,  fearing that lesbians would tarnish the movement’s reputation if NOW members were accused of being “man-haters” or “a bunch of dykes.”

The Lavender Menace movement increased lesbians’ visibility in the women’s liberation movement. In 1971 NOW passed a resolution acknowledging the double-oppression of lesbians as women and homosexuals and the “oppression of lesbians as a legitimate concern of feminism.” But it wasn’t until 1977 that Friedan and the National Women’s Conference fully acknowledged lesbian participation in the women’s movement.