Dykes on Bikes will rumble through San Francisco next June with a new badge of honor: a name to call their own. After more than two years of legal work, the San Francisco Women's Motorcycle Contingent won the right to officially trademark the moniker, Dykes on Bikes.
It was an early Christmas present for the group's president, Vick Germany. She didn't expect to hear anything until the first of the year.
"I was totally thrilled, but also in shock because I didn't expect it at all," she said of the decision.
The United States Patent and Trademark offices had turned down the group's application three times. So when Germany heard there was news in the case earlier this month, her heart stopped and she held her breath. She thought the case was going to have to go to court.
"I was expecting the worst," said Germany, who has been involved in the motorcycle group for the last five years.
The group of mostly leather-clad, motorcycle riding lesbians has used the phrase, Dykes on Bikes, for the last three decades. But members wanted to trademark it, when they found out someone else was looking to claim the phrase for commercial uses in 2003.
When they looked to officially coin the phrase for themselves, they said the trademark office told them the word "dyke" was disparaging to lesbians and couldn't be trademarked. The case quickly turned into a battle to prove the phrase was not a pejorative term, but rather an empowering one.
The case's lead attorney, Brooke Oliver of the Brook Oliver Law Group, got involved because she has long admired the group for helping change the language and images surrounding lesbian issues.
Oliver said she knew she had to step in to help the group that inspires her every Pride day when they motor through downtown San Francisco at the head of the parade.
"It's always been an exciting and powerful moment for me," said Oliver.
When the motorcycle contingent started, dyke was considered a derogatory term.
"It was a badge of shame and people didn't use it at all," said Oliver.
Since then, Oliver said the group has helped lesbians transform the word.
"The term has overwhelmingly reclaimed by lesbians to describe themselves in a way that denotes strength and power," said Shannon Minter, the legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco.
NCLR got involved in the case this summer and helped collect statements from 27 experts including sociologists, activists, linguists, and psychologists. The experts submitted hundreds of pages of paperwork saying the word "dyke" was very far from being pejorative in lesbian communities.
"I was always very confident that they would have to because it was so clear that the law and the evidence were on our side," Minter said.