NYC’s “Dyke March” Hasn’t Been About Lesbians for a While
New Yorkers face an important choice: do they stand with lesbians, or the men who usurped their whole movement?
July 13, 2025
The post below was originally published on July 12 by ROAR Women NYC, which “seeks to restore women’s spaces, protect women’s rights, and build women’s community in the NYC metro area.” According to its website:
ROAR is a lesbian-founded group initially formed to oppose the extreme misogyny and homophobia of the men’s sexual entitlement movement known as gender ideology. However, after watching legacy organizations not only refuse to stand unabashedly for women’s rights but refuse to even admit they know what a woman is, we have expanded our mission to address other neglected forms of women’s oppression.
You can find them on Twitter/X at @RoarWomenNYC.
The original post is here, and I am sharing it with permission.
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New York City earned its place in gay history as the site of the Stonewall uprising and the world’s first gay Pride Parade. Nowadays, though, Pride attracts a wide audience, and lesbian and gay New Yorkers find themselves increasingly excluded from a movement that was meant for them.
Take the Dyke March, a protest march that markets itself as a revolutionary experience by and for lesbians. The use of an anti-lesbian slur in the name suggests a reclaiming by the people it once hurt. But look closer, and the organizers welcome
[a]ny person who identifies as a dyke… regardless of gender expression or identity, sex assigned at birth, [or] sexual orientation.
The word “lesbian” refers to homosexual women, a small group whose advocacy needs can easily get drowned out by louder voices, but whose marginalized status makes “lesbian” a very trendy identity label for young people with luxury beliefs. Hence, the organizers of the NYC Dyke March had a choice: focus on lesbian advocacy, or turn “lesbian” and “dyke” into words anyone can identify into in the name of inclusivity, leaving nothing at all for the people they belonged to.
What they really meant was excluding any lesbian who refused to give in to the demands of men who demanded access to lesbian spaces. The people who should be marching at the front, the boisterous lesbians standing up for their rights in a hostile climate, haven’t been welcome for years.
Back in 2019, a group of lesbians showed up with signs and a banner honoring Stormé DeLarverie, considered by many to have been a pivotal figure in the Stonewall uprising. One wore a shirt with the definition of a lesbian on it: a female homosexual.
The prospect that the word “lesbian” had any meaning at all proved too controversial for the NYC Dyke March organizers.
In this footage taken by one of the women who was ejected, the organizers can be heard refusing to engage and making a human chain to prevent the group from re-entering the march.
Said Jen, a lesbian New Yorker who was one of those banned, “We were met with screaming, aggression, and a human chain formed to physically block us from entering the march. They stepped on our feet, got in our faces, and labeled us ‘transphobic’ without conversation — simply for showing up as actual lesbians honoring our own history.
“Let that sink in: we were removed from a lesbian march for being lesbian.”
“The fact that the feelings of non-lesbians are being put before the safety of actual lesbians is distressing, to say the least,” said a participant holding a labrys flag. “It’s ridiculous that holding up [this flag] is enough to get screamed at at a lesbian march.”
Women’s Liberation Radio News interviewed two participants, Jen and Eli, about their expulsion. Click here to listen.
Some of the women involved told ROAR that they haven’t been back since. Meanwhile, opening the march to men who like calling themselves a slur for lesbians has opened the event to a new, predictable, group of participants.
Moreover, the marches that took place in 2024 or 2025 refused to address a local human rights crisis that would ensure New York’s lesbian community stayed destroyed until it could be reversed.
“The situation for New York lesbians is dire,” said Elizabeth Fedak, ROAR’s organizer. “With the State Constitution prohibiting discrimination based on ‘gender identity,’ a straight man could easily sue a lesbian-only group for not letting him in. All he would have to do is claim he feels like a woman inside, and women refusing to accept his fantasy as their reality becomes an act of bigotry in the eyes of the state.
“In this way, straight men try to exert power over lesbian women, and push them back into the closet unless they comply.”
NY voters were widely misled that the purpose of the Equal Rights Amendment, which passed on November 6, 2024, was to ensure abortion access. Many people ROAR spoke to did not realize the amendment also supported men playing in women’s sports, being housed in women’s facilities in prison, using women’s private intimate areas, and entering lesbian spaces.
By ignoring the total destruction of lesbian rights statewide, the NYC Dyke March has lost a key ingredient of its appeal: authenticity.
“Lesbians are being erased, not by accident, but by design,” said Jen. “These marches used to be about defiance and visibility.
“Now we’re being told to shut up and step aside in our own spaces and the irony is, we’re called oppressive for refusing to let men define what a lesbian is.”
Well, we do not consent. And we will not comply.
Solidarity with this post. My friend and I were physically assaulted multiple times and had our signs snatched and stolen, and my hat stolen for showing up at this year's SF D(ick) March as actual dykes. One of the organizers screamed into the PA system, "get the fuck out of here! You are NOT welcome, we are INCLUSIVE!" We were called naz*s, bigots, and haters, and were kettled out of the park by a bunch of weirdos.
When we made a police report, a male posing as a woman took it.
The world is a disgusting cesspool of ridiculous hatred toward women, especially lesbians, much worse because of the "trans" identity craze that allows men to invade all of our spaces.
Cool.
Thank you so, so much, Kara, for giving this a boost.