She/Ze Sex, Los Angeles

Sappho’s Return co-founders Natasha Dyer and Laura Luna Placencia threw together yet another She/Ze Sex this year at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center’s Village at Ed Gould Plaza. And you need to get down on your lovely dyke knees and thank them, kids. Here’s why.

She/Ze Sex: the varying degrees of gender identity and sexuality, is an annual love letter in the form of a tight little event filled with performance artists, film shorts, spoken word, live music, erotic poetry, and one of a kind clothing and accessories. This mind and culture feast is produced to bridge the gap between lesbian identified women, bisexuals, and transgender.

“I don’t want to generalize,” began Ms Placencia, choosing her words carefully, “there are certain groups of women who think that only women who are born as women can call themselves such. The more we learn about the ways in which people identify us as time goes along, the more we can reach a place where we break the barriers between the different groups. We’re doing that tonight through clothing, music, performance art, activism in general.”

Ms. Dyer nodded, “It’s all about bringing the community together. We’re seeing differences and separations that shouldn’t be there. So we started She/Ze sex to address those barriers.”

I saw no barriers that evening as I walked around meeting with the vendors and activists. There was Vivian Escalante of the legendary Dyke March L.A. ready to share the importance of dyke rights, visibility and acceptance. Karin Andrea, inventor of Dick Duds (sexy cock bags for dildos on the go ) was there with her fiance Kalil Cohen, touting Code Pink Women for Peace as well as Bossy Bottoms underwear. Not to be outdone was Vanessa Craig and posse with her subversive Sew-Gay clothing line.

Gender fluid DJ Nova Jade made us feel woefully underdressed as she strolled about, her beautiful chest and torso painted with blue and white swirls and starbursts by Madame J. Body Designs. I read up on Tongue to Tongue, a three day workshop/event scheduled for the following weekend designed to acknowledge and honor transgender, genderqueer and gender non-conforming women of color where they have once been denied or worse, ignored. After having acquainted myself with Lucy and Gail’s Party in the Desert which provides travel packages for women of color from 20 to 70, I couldn’t help but be reminded of how