It’s been gone for a long time — but this year a beloved community tradition is proudly returning to San Diego Pride.
After a long absence, the Dyke March will once again kick off Pride Week this July 11.
If you’re shocked by the name of the march, that’s by design. The term “dyke,” originally a slur against lesbians or “masculine” women from its first recorded use in the 1930s, has undergone a long semantic journey over the years, from pejorative to reclamation to empowerment. Because of that, its interpretation within the community can be layered and expanded.
Women carry a Day of the Dyke banner in the San Diego Pride Parade in 2002. (Photo courtesy of Lambda Archives)But what is it, for those who weren’t around when the Dyke March first existed? The answer is bound up tightly in San Diego’s history.
“It’s about reconnecting with an important piece of our movement’s history and creating another opportunity for the community to gather, organize, celebrate and be seen during Pride Week,” said Joslyn Hatfield with San Diego Pride, adding that the Dyke March is not intended to replace other events such as She Fest or any grassroots movements, but to augment them.
The past: Advocacy and solidarity
A group of women carries a San Diego Sisterhood banner in the 1990 Pride Parade. (Photo courtesy Lambda Archives)Women who love women have always been part of Pride movements. Over the years, however, the visibility of lesbians was often overshadowed by media only covering the activities of the men.
“Like, what have I got in common with you privileged white boys?” said Renée Richetts, who was a lesbian health care advocate in the late 1980s and early 1990s at a time when lesbian health conversations were seen as taboo, and ran the Lesbian Health Project and the Lesbian Health Fair. “We aren’t even the same kind of queer.”
At the same time this conflict was emerging, the struggle for the rights of queer people overall was ongoing, as LGBTQ+ people were often targeted for scapegoating and fearmongering.
Amid that dynamic, in-group community and solidarity become matters of life or death.
This led to lesbians embracing a much more inclusive dynamic and organizing “lesbian marches” in solidarity with Pride during its first years. But the growing solidarity and visibility of the burgeoning Pride movement was interrupted and nearly destroyed in the early 1980s by a mysterious illness. The AIDS crisis had begun.
Within just a couple of years, San Diego’s once-vibrant, growing queer community — especially the parts of it that were made up mostly of gay men — was in tatters.
Inside the Lesbian Health Faire booth at the San Diego Pride Festival in 1992. (Photo courtesy Lambda Archives)One of the most destructive, difficult part of AIDS in the 1980s was the social isolation. The HIV virus and how it transmitted was poorly understood and wrapped up in moralizing about “dissolute” lifestyles.
Many who had been diagnosed with AIDS in the 1980s weren’t just ill; they quickly lost their jobs, their health insurance, and most of their friends to the stigma. Many had already been disowned by their families for being queer.
Women socialize ahead of a Blood Sisters blood drive in 1983. (Photo courtesy of Lambda Archives)A handful of activists defied the commonly-held beliefs about HIV and AIDs back in the day to sit with sick people, cooking for them, cleaning their homes and taking on other chores they were too ill to do.
Some of those activists were lesbians who quietly formed solidarity groups, most famously the San Diego Blood Sisters, who donated blood while gay men were barred from doing so due to panics about the virus.
A woman participates in a blood drive in 1983 organized by the Blood Sisters. (Photo courtesy Lambda Archives)Barbara Vick, Nicolette Ibarra, and Wendy Sue Biegeleisen (a founding member of ACT UP San Diego) helped pull together the San Diego Blood Sisters’ first drive in July 1983, held at the San Diego Blood Bank on Upas Street in Hillcrest. They didn’t expect much of a response at the time — but nearly 200 women showed up, resulting in at least 130 donations.
While the Blood Sisters and other related movements did not receive widespread coverage or even much local attention, their efforts locally deepened solidarity between queer groups in the 1980s and into the 1990s, holding together the frayed ends of the LGBTQ+ movement.
In 1994, amid a national movement and struggle for visibility, and the year after they were first held in larger cities such as Washington DC, New York and Los Angeles, the first San Diego Dyke March officially came into being.
These marches were organized by the direct action group Lesbian Avengers, perhaps best known for their fire-eating protests. The Blood Sisters had a presence at the San Diego event; Wendy Sue Biegeleisen was among those who provided some of the crowd direction and security.
The San Diego Dyke March in 1996. (Photo courtesy Lambda Archives)Documentary footage from the first Dyke March shows a vibrant and diverse crowd of women waving signs, chanting and cheering as they make their way through Hillcrest. The video also shows support from outside the community: men and women pointing, clapping and holding signs.
Over time, the purposes of the march changed, becoming a tradition rather than a demand for solidarity, inclusion and visibility. It was replaced by other woman-centered and lesbian-centered events — until now.
The present: Return to San Diego Pride
Dyke March participants walk inside the San Diego Pride Parade in 2002. (Photo courtesy Lambda Archives)There have been a few Dyke Marches organized locally since 2024, but this is the first Pride-sanctioned kickoff since its quiet disappearance in the aughts. She Fest, recently renamed to Sapphic Collective of San Diego, took its place and was part of San Diego Pride for close to a decade before splitting off in 2025, leaving a space open for another woman-led event.
“For me personally, after more than a decade of building events for queer women and LGBTQIA+ communities in San Diego and beyond, I know how important it is for people to see themselves reflected in our movement,” Hatfield said.
The Dyke March occurs on a sidewalk without permits, as seen here in 2000. (Photo courtesy Lambda Archives)For KishaLynn Elliott, the first Black lesbian to lead San Diego Pride, greenlighting the renewed Dyke March was one of the first decisions she made when she came to the organization in January.
“It is going to be a sidewalk march, so kind of taking it back to the grassroots. It’s not so much about permits and street closures and permission, it is about mobilizing community, visibility and presence,” Elliott said. “So we are inviting all dykes and their allies to come to Hillcrest.”
This year, the march will take place July 11, beginning at 11 a.m. at Mo’s on University Avenue and wrapping up with an afterparty at Gossip Grill, an inclusive, women-centered club.
The Flame, an iconic women’s bar, in University Heights. (Photo courtesy of Lambda Archives)“I’ve been in San Diego since ’99, and have been participating and helping Pride with Gossip Grill for 16 years,” said Moe Girton, owner of Gossip Grill and a passionate supporter of Pride who started her career as a bartender at The Flame, a legendary lesbian bar that closed down in 2004. (She’s also a blood donor and hosts blood drives at her venue to honor the original Blood Sisters.)
“I’m very very excited to bring this back and I’m excited to educate the younger generations on what Dyke March is, because to them ‘dyke’ is an old ladies’ term they don’t really identify with in that way.”
Finding the future
“While San Diego Pride Week offers many wonderful opportunities to experience queer joy, we also recognize that our communities are navigating a period of sustained attacks on LGBTQIA+ rights, particularly those impacting transgender people, bodily autonomy, healthcare access, education and freedom of expression,” Hatfield said.
“In that context, bringing back the Dyke March felt both timely and necessary.”
While in many ways the future looks very different from the vantage point of 2026, some core issues remain intransigent. For example, lesbians and other queer women do have more visibility now, but they are still overshadowed by reporting about men and their movements. Coverage of their activities also is rolled into the “queer” descriptor.
Barbara McDonald holds a sign in a 1986 Myth California protest. (Photo courtesy Lambda Archives)“As per usual in any sphere, women do so much and they really carry the workload and they’re often overlooked, underappreciated,” said Nicole Verdes, executive director of the Lambda Archives of San Diego, which collects and displays historical materials related to local LGBTQ+ movements.
And then there is the rise of global fascism, which historically harshly represses the rights of women and queer people. This means the time is right for a renewed push for solidarity and visibility, Verdes said.
“Some people are taken aback by it, but for those of us who related to that word or identify that way, there’s something so rad about having a Dyke March … it’s really about claiming our space.”
Verdes said that they know San Diego and all its queer communities will rise to meet the challenges of a new uncertain time, because Verdes knows their history.
Dyke March at San Diego Pride Parade in 2001. (Photo courtesy Lambda Archives)“Our community is not afraid to fight, to stand up, to stick with it. The arc of justice always comes out in our favor … so yes, this will be a very long road, but I’m completely confident that the queer community will thrive and bloom and change just like it always has,” they said.
“As scary as the moment is that we find ourselves in right now — I don’t know how to say this without sounding Pollyannaish — we always come out on top.”
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