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Each year approximately 15,000 self-proclaimed dykes attend this event. Because of this, allies and others who do not identify as 'dykes' have been asked to stand on the sidewalks and cheer on the marchers.
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The Dyke March is open to everyone who identifies as a 'dyke'. On the Saturday before Pride, participants gather in Bryant Park as they prepare to march down Fifth Avenue towards Washington Square Park. Because of the especially large turnout of people in New York that Pride season for the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, the 1994 March also inspired people from other areas to start their own annual Dyke Marches. When the Avengers organized the 2nd Annual New York Dyke March in June of 1994, the March was solidified as an annual event. The impetus for the March in June came from growing dissatisfaction with the New York Gay Pride March and other official city sanctioned events, which the Lesbian Avengers and others who were similarly critical of shifts in mainstream gay and lesbian politics felt were increasingly corporate, sanitized, and depoliticized, failing to serve the actual needs of gay people in general and women and lesbians in particular. After the success of the first Dyke March as part of the March on Washington in April of 1993, the NY Chapter of the Lesbian Avengers organized the first New York City Dyke March during the Pride season, in June of that same year. While separate Lesbian Pride marches were held in New York City in the 1970s, they were not a regular occurrence with consistent organization. In general, Dyke Marches were established to protest what many lesbians have seen Gay Pride events' domination by white gay men and corporate interests at the expense of lesbians, often highlighting the exclusion of lesbians of color and working-class lesbians in particular. Most Dyke Marches today occur in the month of June during Pride celebrations, which generally transpire around the anniversary of the Stonewall riots in Lower Manhattan on June 28, 1969. Organized by the Lesbian Avengers, over 20,000 women participated in the march. The first Dyke March was formed in Washington D.C., during the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation, and held on April 24, 1993.
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350 women participated in the demonstration. Later, in October 1981, the now-defunct organization Lesbians Against the Right held a "Dykes in the Streets" march in Toronto, Ontario, with lesbian power, pride, and visibility as the theme. Approximately 200 lesbians attending the fifth Bi-National Lesbian Conference marched through downtown streets chanting "Look over here, look over there, lesbians are everywhere!" Dyke Marches also take place in Berlin and London in Europe and Calgary, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg in Canada.īefore the concept of a "Dyke March" came to be, one of the first documented lesbian pride marches in North America took place in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in May 1981. Atlanta, Boston, Buffalo, and Chicago Long Beach, Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco, and West Hollywood in California Minneapolis Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and Portland (Oregon) and Seattle in the northwestern United States. Larger metropolitan areas usually have several Pride-related happenings (picnics, workshops, arts festivals, parties, benefits, dances, bar events) both before and after the march to further community building with outreach to specific segments such as older women, women of color, and lesbian parenting groups.ĭyke Marches are now held in the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens in New York City Asbury Park, New Jersey, Washington, D.C. Dyke Marches commonly take place the Friday or Saturday before LGBT pride parades. The main purpose of a Dyke March is the encouragement of activism within the lesbian community and highlighting lesbian and dyke presence in LGBT communities and the world in general. A Dyke March is a lesbian visibility and protest march, much like the original Gay Pride parades and gay rights demonstrations.