December 2006 Editorial

Twas the night before deadline and LQ wasn’t even close to ready to go out. It’s been a busy few months, and I haven’t had time to beat the bushes for articles or ads, or to write much.

When I go to write for LQ, all I have passion for is the scary stories. For example, the one about how I still am appalled at alleged child abuser Robin Sharpe being glorified repeatedly as a free speech hero in queer newspapers, when incest survivors are being silenced (by the same social machinery that supports him) every day.

Scarier yet, I imagine writing about the pink elephant in the living room of the feminist community in Vancouver; the ill-kept but not-public secret of why many feminist and community activists and leaders (including me) want nothing to do with a certain litigious and predatory women’s organization, but few will say it publicly.

However, I’m unlikely to write about those things soon. I’m older and busier now, and I write (among other things) for a living. I don’t have the energy to take on the thankless (or worse) task of fighting those battles publicly or to volunteer my time as much as I have been for LQ these last two years.

It’s hard to be fully out. Being out as a lesbian or even a feminist is relatively easy with practice. Being out as someone who has thought long and seriously about some of the issues and found she disagrees with the some of the most vocal received truths of her community is harder.

I understand that newspapers exist to sell ads. Newspapers whose major advertisers are porn producers exist to sell a certain kind of commodified sex, primarily to men, and I think that unfortunately shapes what realities are seen as valid. If that’s all we can read, it becomes ’the voice’ of our community.

In creating LQ, I wanted it to be a voice separate from the ‘post-modern libertarian’ queer community that has enough places to express itself. I wanted to celebrate lesbians, and women’s bravery, knowledge and strength, not the free speech of child-abusers. Do you have a passion for covering news and views about lesbians not covered in the queer press? Story angles that are perhaps unfashionable, but constructive for lesbians and women? Do you want to profile your local hera or women-focussed project? If you are interested in writing for LQ, send your work along or drop me a line. 400 words maximum, about lesbians and by lesbians (trans-inclusive). You don’t have to be ‘a writer’. The deadline is ‘as soon as possible, how about today?’ LQ needs regular contributors to keep going.