International Rebel Dykes Day is for lesbians who 'feel like outsiders'

"'Rebel Dykes' is a retrospective term to describe a raucous, unapologetic community of activist, sex-positive lesbians who lived on the very fringes of society in 1980s London - many of them squatting in areas such as Brixton and Peckham - and who ran riot through both the decade and city. The group's origins can be traced back to the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp of the early 1980s, which itself was a liberating feminist space and a place to explore sapphic sexuality."

""It's very hard to pin it down," producer of the Rebel Dykes documentary film Siobhan Fahey - not that Siobhan Fahey from Bananarama - said told PinkNews of the word 'dyke'. "It's words like punks, activists and outsiders, perhaps people who don't always spend their time within lesbian communities, perhaps more in the straight world and they're the dyke within the straight world. You know, the lass at the festival who drives the lorry.""

International Rebel Dykes Day will take place on 29 January to honour the history of dykes and Rebel Dykes globally. Rebel Dykes refers to a raucous, unapologetic community of activist, sex-positive lesbians from 1980s London, many of whom squatted in Brixton and Peckham. The group's roots trace to Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, a feminist space where sapphic sexuality was explored. The trans-inclusive collective embraced gender non-conforming aesthetics, leather, kink and polyamory amid anti-pornography 'sex wars'. They combined anti-capitalist, anti-establishment activism with solidarity for AIDS activism, workers' rights and nuclear disarmament, staging high-profile protests including actions against the BBC and Section 28.

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