On this day in queerstory: Vice Versa revolutionizes queer press

November 7 holds a subtle but strategic place in queer history—marking both the low roar of print queerness and the sharp pang of legal setbacks. It’s a date when communication and politics collided, readability met resistance, and community found ways to publish, vote, and push back.

In 1921, under her pen-name “Lisa Ben”, the young writer and editor Edythe D. Eyde self-published Vice Versa, the first known lesbian-oriented magazine in North America. Though the date falls on November 7, the magazine actually appeared in the late 1940s—but its creator’s birth on this date anchors a symbolic link: in a world barred from acknowledgment, Eyde used typewriter and mimeograph to make lesbian life readable.

With a witty cover line, pseudonymous by necessity, and a circulation limited to local Los Angeles bars and friends’ bedrooms, Vice Versa did what mainstream media refused—it portrayed women loving women, matter-of-factly. Eyde even wrote simple songs for lesbian gatherings. In publishing, she laid a foundation of community communication that decades later would carry movements.

Nearly half a century later, on November 7, 1978, the U.S. west coast registered a powerful demonstration of queer resistance. In California, the feared Briggs Initiative—Proposition 6, which would have forbidden gay and lesbian people from teaching in public schools—was defeated by a two-to-one margin. The result was a turning point: queer teachers, parents, and students learned that ballots could protect as well as oppress.

The defeat of Proposition 6 didn’t carry trumpets and parades—but its effect was audible in classrooms and staffrooms. Queer educators realized their presence need not be hidden, and families felt a little less vulnerable. Moments like November 7, 1978, offer the quieter axis on which rights turn: not only marches and laws, but everyday recognition.

Meanwhile, more than two decades later, on November 7, 2006, eight U.S. states voted on constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage; seven passed. The date thus serves as a reminder: visibility and recognition often ride on a razor’s edge between progress and backlash.

Taken together, these threads form a story of communication, representation, and political fight. From the typed pages of a lesbian magazine, to nearly-silent classrooms, to the voting booths of America — November 7 teaches that queerness advances not only through protest, but through presence, publishing, and policy.

Edythe Eyde’s Vice Versa may have reached only dozens, but those dozens clustered into networks. Those networks became safe places to exchange letters, records, and records of love. By daring to publish, Eyde said: “We exist.” Political battles followed that phrasing, as teachers, voters and advocates raised voices. The defeat of Proposition 6 said: “We can stay.” The votes of 2006 said: “We are still contested.”

And in between those dates lies the space of cultural transformation. Publishing made possible identity; identity made possible visibility; visibility made possible politics. The adult challenge is to remember that each of these steps builds not only outward—into law and culture—but inward—into how we see ourselves and each other.