The Alice Austen House is excited to present Lesbian Avengers in Conversation, a virtual series launching in December 2024. Over four weeks, members of the pioneering activist group, the Lesbian Avengers—who held a powerful action at the Alice Austen House in 1994—will join in conversations that explore the significance of organizing, raising visibility for lesbians, and the critical role of archives in activism.

In this virtual lecture series, each week of this December, a different guest from the Lesbian Avengers will join Alice Austen House Executive Director Victoria Munro to reflect on the impact of their 1994 action, share insights into their organizing experiences, and discuss how their activism has shaped their subsequent careers. These discussions will offer unique perspectives on the intersections of activism, LGBTQ+ visibility, and public history. This week features Maxine Wolfe.

Maxine Wolfe is one of the coordinators of the Lesbian Herstory Archives. A longtime lesbian and feminist organizer, she was a member of Revolting Lesbians, one of the founders of the NYC Dyke March Committee, the Lesbian Avengers, the NY and National ACT UP Women’s Committees and Women for Women. She was on the national board of the Reproductive Rights National Network and was a member of the Coalition for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse and the Coalition Against Racism, Sexism, Anti-Semitism and Heterosexism as well as other organizations. She is a Professor Emerita of the Environmental Psychology Ph.D. Program at the City University of New York Graduate School where, among other courses, she taught seminars on Lesbian and Gay studies. Among her publications and presentations are Invisible Women in Invisible Places: Lesbians, Lesbian Bars and the Social Production of People/Environment.

In 1994, wearing old fashioned bathing suits and life preservers labeled, “Dyke Preservers,” the Lesbian Avengers disrupted the annual Nautical Festival at the Alice Austen House. Inspired by the anti-AIDS group ACT UP, the Lesbian Avengers were dedicated to “fighting for lesbian visibility and survival” through direct action and humor.

Learning that the Board of Directors had publicly denied Alice’s lesbianism, they proclaimed the Austen House Museum “a national lesbian landmark.”

What seemed like an outrageous demand in 1994 eventually came to pass. In 2017, the Alice Austen House Museum was declared a national site of LGBTQ history.

This series marks the beginning of a larger initiative by the Alice Austen House to document and honor the legacy of the Lesbian Avengers and their contributions to authentic storytelling for trailblazers like Alice Austen. Generously supported by Humanities New York, Lesbian Avengers in Conversation aims to deepen understanding of LGBTQ+ history and inspire future generations of activists and allies.

The Lesbian Avengers began in New York City in 1992 as a direct action group focused on issues vital to lesbian survival and visibility. They refined media-savvy tactics, often creating actions for their visual appeal, and touched a nerve with the Lesbian Avenger Manifesto. The group quickly spread worldwide after the Avengers organized a Dyke March for lesbian visibility on the eve of the Lesbian and Gay March on Washington in 1993 that mobilized 20,000 lesbians. The Avengers also developed a civil rights organizing project that championed “out” grassroots activism, that not only fought homophobic initiatives, but worked to train activists for the longterm.

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