It’s still hanging in my hallway.īechdel retired Dykes in 2008, breaking many hearts (including mine). When I published Women’s Glib, my first collection of women’s humor, in 1991, I included as many of her cartoons as I could, and I was touched when Bechdel drew a copy of Glib into the background of a strip that took place in a women’s bookstore. I fell hard for Dykes and quickly became a cheerleader for Alison’s work. Bechdel covered all the issues, personal and political, important to a lesbian, or a lesbian wannabe, or a straight woman like me who hungered for a world in which women were subjects, not objects. It was women who drove the action - falling in and out of love, building community, becoming politically active, and changing with the times. There were men in the strip too, but they were merely bit players. (Think Friends or Cheers, but everyone’s a dyke.) Wise and funny, it was a sitcom on paper with an all-lesbian cast. At the heart of lesbian life was Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For (DTWOF), a comic strip that didn’t merely reflect but defined, if not codified, what it meant to be a 1980s lesbian.
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