LGB Fight Back is declaring March 31, 2021 the first annual LGB Day of Visibility! We hope all our lesbian, gay, and bisexual friends are having a fantastic day. If you’re on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, join in with the hashtag #LGBDayofVisibility to tell the world about your favorite #LGBIcon! On Spinster, we’ll be sharing just a few of the lesbian and bisexual female role models our organization’s leaders look up to and draw inspiration from. 💜

Pictured here: Stormé DeLarverie, a black butch lesbian and drag king. DeLarverie has been identified as the Stonewall Lesbian, whom violent cops assaulted outside the Stonewall Inn. She called out to nearby gay men: [“Why don’t you *guys* do something?”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nFxpQG7nBQ) DeLarverie was the MC and only female member of the Jewel Box Revue drag troupe from 1955-69. She was also a lesbian fashion pioneer, wearing men’s clothes proudly in public: [“I was doing it, and then [other lesbians] started doing it!”](http://web.archive.org/web/20200604065309/https://afterellen.com/people/77167-an-interview-with-lesbian-stonewall-veteran-storm-delarverie/2)

Mabel Hampton (1902-1989) was a black rights and lesbian rights activist during the Harlem Renaissance. She was a dancer, a pulp fiction collector, and a survivor of violence both by her own family and by the state. Hampton in her own words: “I, Mabel Hampton, have been a lesbian all my life, for 82 years, and I am proud of myself and my people. I would like all my people to be free in this country and all over the world, my gay people and my black people.”

This First Annual LGB Day of Visibility, get your butch pride on with Lisa Ben’s “The Girl that I Marry.” 😍 The song is a loose cover of an Irving Berlin song whose lyrics began, "The girl that I marry will have to be / as soft and as pink as a nursery ..." Instead, Ben imagines a wife "as butch as a hunk of machinery"! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w33rPGwoZQE Lisa Ben was the pen name of out lesbian Edith B. Eyde (1921-2015). Aside from her career as author, editor, and musician, Ben also created *Vice Versa*, the first lesbian periodical in the US, in 1947.

We absolutely adore this photo of Gladys Bentley (1907-1960), an openly lesbian Harlem Renaissance jazz singer and pianist! In the 1920s and 30s, Bentley lived with butch pride, dressing in suits and top hats, and flirting with female audience members during her performances.

Did you know that Dr. Sally Ride (1951-2012), the first American woman in space, was in a same-sex relationship? She and her partner, Tam O'Shaughnessy, were together for 27 years. Ride was an astronaut, educator, and feminist who encouraged girls to pursue science.

Who’s your personal LGB hero or shero? Join in on Spinster, Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook with the hashtags #LGBDayofVisibility #LGBIcon!

@cole_burner@pleroma.nobodyhasthe.biz @LGBFightBack@spinster.xyz AKA "Crosscountry Diaper Dyke"

@cole_burner@pleroma.nobodyhasthe.biz @LGBFightBack@spinster.xyz She did it from space too! The first interplanetary crime was perpetrated by a lesbian. Breaking new ground!