ABSTRACT
If we take Audre Lorde’s call to move from silence to action seriously, then anytime queers take control of language, whenever they name that which they are, they are engaging in activism. As words like “queer” and “dyke” moved from labels meant to demean and isolate to powerful words expressing identities, queers began to claim power over their own lives. Queer activism began the first time someone said, “I am queer” in the face of silence. Some of the earliest forms of overt political activism on behalf of queers happened not in the United States, but in Germany. In fact, what might be called the first “gay rights movement” happened in Berlin in the 1920s, the same city that became the seat of Nazi power.
