As we enter 2025, we find that many steps remain to secure LGBTQ+ rights. Curve’s archivist Julia Rosenzweig examines the inspiring legacy of lesbian activist Urvashi Vaid.

DOCUMENTARY, THERE ARE THINGS TO DO
On Wednesday, December 11, 2024, The Curve Foundation proudly screened There Are Things To Do, an award-winning documentary about LGBTQ+ activist Urvashi Vaid. The short film captures Vaid’s time in Provincetown with her long-term partner, comedian and activist Kate Clinton. It chronicles just a small slice of Urvashi’s lifetime commitment to fighting for equality through community and calls to action. The event was well-attended, with around 60 people tuning in, and we closed out the screening with a discussion using a guide provided by Center Link. This organization helped distribute the film to LGBTQ centers around the country.
The screening of There Are Things To Do was not the first time I had encountered Urvashi’s name or work. This was the case for many people who watched the film with us, too. As The Curve Foundation’s archivist, I had read about Urvashi’s calls to action in Curve magazine dating back to when Curve was titled Deneuve magazine. I was eager to dive deep into the archive to see what I could find on the activist. It turns out that Curve magazine advertised Urvashi’s book Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay Liberation for years after it came out, profiled her in both 1991 and 2013, and named her as one of their 15 most influential lesbians in July 1998.
The United States in 1991 was pre Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and its repeal, Obergefell v. Hodges, and Lawrence v. Texas-three groundbreaking Supreme Court decisions that allowed LGTBQ folks to actively serve in the military, to marry, and invalidated sodomy laws across the country (even though 14 states still have them on the books today). There was a lot of work to do for fundamental gay rights, and as the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Urvashi was on the front lines. One of Curve magazine’s regular contributing writers, Val C. Phoenix, interviewed Urvashi for the article “Taking Militance to the Mainstream” that year. In it, she expresses the need for grassroots organizing, lobbying, and education. She also champions the need for intersectionality in this fight, saying, “We at the Task Force believe in an interrelationship between forms of oppression and not only because they affect gays and lesbians.” What struck me the most about this article is how evergreen Urvashi’s organizing techniques and ideological beliefs are. Change can start at the local level, and we are stronger together.
Fast-forward to 2013. Contributing politics editor Victoria Brownsworth interviews Urvashi for Curve magazine after the release of her book Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class, and the Assumptions of LGBTQ Politics. Urvashi was still campaigning to “mainstream queers into political power” and to approach gay rights activism with an intersectional lens…messages that continue to be important today. By this year, Urvashi had left her position at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and started her own lesbian political action committee that exists to this day. She had also written two books, contributed to two more, and served as executive director of the Arcus Foundation, an international charitable foundation focused on issues related to LGBT rights, social justice, ape conservation, and environmental preservation.
In 2022, Urvashi sadly passed away from cancer, leaving behind a legacy of community, advocacy, and mutual aid. In addition to her direct action contributions, she helped build organizations that continue to affect change today: the Creating Change conference, now in its 35th year; the National LGBTQ Women’s Community Survey; and LPAC, the first lesbian Super PAC.
Her ethos of care and action also manifests in the work of her sister’s child, Alok Vaid-Menon. Alok is a gender non-conforming writer, performance artist, poet, and comedian. Some of the topics that their work deals with are violence against trans-folk, body diversity, and freedom from the constraints of gender normativity. Just last year, acclaimed lesbian director Alexandra Hedison came out with a short documentary on Alok’s “limitless expression of self.” Her wife, Jodie Foster, was the executive producer of the short.
Urvashi laid the groundwork for gender-expansive activists like Alok to do the work that they do, and for that, we are all grateful. We can still learn from the lessons that she left for us, too. I’ll leave you with the suggestions of ‘Things To Do’ that CenterLink put together based on Urvashi’s 1995 book Virtual Equality:
- Vote
- Remain Vigilant
- Challenge Misinformation
- Commit to Creating Community
- Work Locally
- Discover Groups in Your Area
- Get Involved
- Stay Involved
- Identify Allies
- Mentor Others
- Don’t Give in to Complacency