Sacred Heart Reads: The Essential D*kes to Watch Out For, by Alison Bechdel
I hope I’m not alone in struggling to connect with the joy I usually feel when Pride comes around. This year has brought a seemingly unending wave of legislation all over the country working to end the rights that LGBT people have fought so hard for. This week, the supreme court overturned Roe V Wade. In the decision, Clarence Thomas stated that the next step should be reexamining Griswold vs. Connecticut, which gave married couples the right to access contraceptives, Obergefell v. Hodges, which gave LGBT Americans the right to marry same-sex partners, and Lawrence v. Texas, which gave the right to private sexual acts, effectively legalizing same sex relationships. Let me tell you, it’s hard to feel the joy of pride as a member of the LGBT community when you’re staring down a future where you legally aren’t supposed to exist.
If you’re finding yourself muttering something about not leading yourself into despair through gritted teeth this week, I’d like to invite you to take a moment to share in gay joy, rather than our pain. This June I reread The Essential D*kes to Watch Out For. If you’ve ever heard of measuring media by the Bechdel test, this is where that comes from. Every two weeks between 1983 to 2008, Alison Bechdel managed to crystalize something about lesbian culture as she experienced it into a one page comic strip published in indie papers and LGBT magazines around the country. For many woman loving women, this strip was our first introduction to a world where women loved one another.
I found The Essential D*kes to Watch Out For at a street sale outside a bookstore when I was in college. I was only two or three months out from tentatively coming out to my friends when, nestled between straight romances, I pulled out a book that proudly used the word I was afraid of being called. There were gay couples on the cover! Where straight people would see it! I bought it and immediately immersed myself in this world where there were other women like me.
Maybe there are some strips that don’t land the same in 2022, and maybe we would use different words if this strip was being written today. But in reading it again I remembered what a revelation it was to meet these characters the first time. From that moment on I had a community. Together, I have felt tremendous joy and crushing grief as my right to live an authentic life has been debated and legislated. It might feel like a time of crushing grief now, but that makes revisiting the joy we find in community even more important.