The San Francisco Dyke March, with the theme of “Dyke Solidarity, Dyke Resistance,” roared back for Pride weekend 2025. Women on motorcycles once again could be heard revving their engines as they helped lead off the event on the corner of 18th and Dolores streets near Mission Dolores Park.
Behind them was a large truck with thumping music emanating from its speakers and a lively group dancing in its truck bed. A sign affixed to its front grill said it all, “Big Dyke Energy.”
“I was here last year and the year before, and we all still rode down the street and walked, but I think the word they're coining this year is ‘official,’” said Nora Green, the president of the Soul Fire Dyke Motorcycle Club.
The Dyke March, whose mission is “to bring the dyke communities together to celebrate our unity, raise our consciousness and be visible,” in fact made its return in an official capacity after a six-year hiatus Saturday, June 28. Programming in Dolores Park started at 11 a.m., and the march followed at 5 p.m.
The last official march took place in 2019, with the 2020 march canceled due to COVID-19 and subsequent years being more impromptu versions of the event. Last year, two weeks prior to the city’s annual Pride celebrations held on the last weekend of June, members of the Dyke March’s former board stepped down.
It resulted in a cancellation of the 2024 march, according to current interim director M Rocket. Community members then banded together for fundraising efforts to ensure the return of the march this year, as reported by the Bay Area Reporter.
Green, a lesbian who lives in Oakland, was riding in the march with fellow Soul Fire DMC members and Dykes on Bikes. Regardless of the march’s unofficial or official labeling, her reason for attending each year was unwavering.
“It’s the same thing that brings me out all the time: being present, being visible, being here, and saying ‘It's okay to be with you all’ and just loving seeing you young people,” said Green, 59.
Fittingly, Frances “Franco” Stevens, the founder and publisher of the lesbian publication Curve Magazine, took the lead in front of the large “Dyke March” banner at the beginning of the march, with an oversized poster of the magazine’s cover that featured the queer indie singing duo of Tegan and Sara attached to the back of her wheelchair. The Curve Foundation, which Stevens co-founded, was one of the sponsors of this year’s march, as was Lyon-Martin Community Health Services.
Closely behind Stevens and the lead banner was a second banner with the wording “Dykes for a free Palestine” written in large black letters. San Francisco resident Lisa Roth, 75, described the group holding the banner as “an ad hoc group of dykes.”
“As leftists and progressives and dykes, and just regular human beings who don't want to sign on for genocide, we wanted to have a presence at the Dyke March,” she said.
Roth, a lesbian who identifies as a Jewish anti-Zionist, helped organize the first San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Dyke Marches in 1993. She noted that the Dyke March committee was initially somewhat hesitant to embrace her ad hoc group’s demand to include a reference to Palestine as a part of their official vision statement.
“We finally, after about six months of struggle, got them to include a phrase about Palestine in their statement, and we knew that if we wanted to have a good presence, we would have to do it ourselves. So that's why we're here,” she said.
For the 2025 march, organizers laid out six values, all viewable on their Instagram page. One reads, “We dykes are against war, imperialism, and all forms of genocide, including the ongoing U.S.-backed genocide in Palestine. We oppose the use of political, institutional, and military power to oppress marginalized groups of people, including native peoples, Black people, and other people of color, immigrants, asylum seekers, people with disabilities, and transgender individuals.”
“That's what we fought for,” explained Roth. “I was at a meeting where the overwhelming majority of people, like 80%, voted for it.”
Roth said it made sense for the Dykes for Palestine contingent, composed of founders of the Dyke March, to have a presence among the marchers on Saturday.
“We have a feeling that most of the people here - that anybody progressive enough to want to fight for dyke liberation - probably doesn't want Palestinian people killed in their name. So, we figured, if we create it, people will join it,” Roth explained.
Signs at the march included “You can’t pinkwash genocide,” “ICE melts under resistance,” and a slew of trans rights statements, including “Trans rights are human rights.” Participants wore shirts featuring sentiments such as “Let’s go lesbians” and carried various LGBTQ+ pride flags, such as one with orange, pink, and white for lesbian pride.
For Green, the march this year was bittersweet, as its official return coincides with a challenging time for women’s rights, minorities, and queer individuals.
“I’m saddened by the changes that are happening right now. I feel like all of the progress that's happened since I started riding and being out and being open about my space in the world is now being taken away on so many levels - my body, being a woman of color, being an LGBTQ person,” she said.
Emphasizing the significance of the many people who showed up to protest and be among community, Green said, “We need to be out here.”
The Dyke March followed its usual route, making lefts onto Valencia, 16th, and Market streets. Bystanders were out in force from start to end, on sidewalks and street corners and in parklets, cheering on the marchers.
When making the climatic turn onto Castro Street, Stevens smiled, the “Dyke March” banner and throngs of people close behind her. Those lining the sidewalks erupted in joy as the procession made their way down the historic street.
“This has been six years in the making!” announced someone via a megaphone who was riding in the bed of the truck that followed close behind.
