Game Changers: Lesbians You Should Know About is a richly-designed and important book about lesbians who have made significant contributions to LGBTQ culture over the past 30 years. I’m creating this book as a resource for students as a result of The FAIR Act, a recent law which requires the inclusion of LGBT History and Social Studies in the California public school curriculum. With your help copies of this book will be donated to libraries and schools throughout the Bay Area.

“It was 1994. I had been doing stand up comedy for ten years when the legendary comedian and gay ally Robin Williams invited me to perform on HBO’s Comic Relief VI. I said totally! But in my head I was terrified, not so much about making my television debut, but of coming out to the world. I was great at already ‘being out’ but ‘coming out’ required muscles I hadn’t developed.  I never got to ‘come out’ to my parents. When I was nineteen they caught me and my ‘friend” smooching. Rather than

Photo: Kent Taylor

deal with their homophobic drama I quit school, left my home in New York and moved to San Francisco where everyone assumed you were LGBT. There was nobody to ‘come out’ to there. I started performing at a local gay comedy club which lead to playing Pride rallies all over the country and soon I became “lesbian famous” without ever having to “come out.” Then I got the HBO gig. Coming out on television was unchartered territory in 1994. This was before Ellen came out and before The L Word. My agent gave me the typical advice “you can be a lesbian in Hollywood just don’t bring it up.”  If I had listened to him I might be a rich lady today. But just before I stepped in front of the television cameras I remembered my nineteen year old self packing her suitcase, escaping her family, feeling scared and alone and I knew what she would want me to do. So I said “Hi folks, let me tell you about myself. I’m part Cuban, part Puerto Rican, part Lesbian and I’m not into labels. I only bring it up because I know some folks have a problem with – Cubans.”

Check out our Buy One We Donate One campaign on Indiegogo!

WE NEED YOUR HELP to get the book printed and in the hands of students. Plans are in order to get the book to press by mid-September and into the schools by the end of the year. And mark your calendars for our exciting launch party coming in early November! Learn more at HERE.

“Most historians still fail to inscribe the accomplishments of lesbian pioneers in our national textbooks. It’s imperative that we find ways for the vanishing late 20th-century lesbian culture to be valued, preserved, and known by future generations.”
–Excerpt from ‘The Disappearing L’ by Bonnie J. Morris

“This is history, this happened. How can we not teach history? My students told me again and again that this class changed their lives, changed their understanding of the world.”
–Lindsey Schlax, teacher, developer of the first high school LGBT history class at SOTA in San Francisco, CA.

©2017 Robin Lowey  www.lesbiangcemag.com