For a woman to be a lesbian in a male-supremacist, capitalist, misogynist, racist, homophobic, imperialist culture, such as that of North America, is an act of resistance. (A resistance that should be championed throughout the world by all forces struggling for liberation from the same slave master.) No matter how a woman lives out her lesbianism- in the closet, in the state legislature, in the bedroom- she has rebelled against becoming the slave master’s concubine, viz. the male-dependent female, the female heterosexual. This rebellion is dangerous business in patriarchy…Lesbianism is a recognition, an awakening, a reawakening of our passion for each (woman) other (woman) and for same (woman).
Excerpt from [Lesbianism: an Act of Resistance by Cheryl Clarke]
Found in the book by Cherríe Moraga, and Gloria Anzaldúa: This Bridge Called My Back: Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Watertown, MA: Persephone, 1981.
