Fifty years ago this year, a group of students at the University of Arkansas formed the Fayetteville Lesbian Alliance, also known as the Razordykes. Fifty years later, students Annalise Robins and Z Heater are bringing the group back, shedding light on seemingly-timeless issues that queer people continue to face. Sophia Nourani reports.
Student Z Heater is one of the founding members of the 2025 Razordykes. They say they were a Freshman with a minor in Gender Studies reading “The Un-Natural State”, a study by UA graduate Brock Thompson of gay and lesbian life in Arkansas in the 20th century, when they first heard of the original Razordykes. In their Junior year, Z was asked to write an honors thesis on a specific research focus.
“Cool, what am I gonna write my thesis on? There's no research about the Razordykes, basically. There's Brock Thompson, there's Al, who has some stuff in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly. But I was like, this definitely seems like something that needs to be explored.
“I went to special collections and was just like, hey, what stuff do you guys have on the early feminist movement? And they gave me basically just a stack of magazines and newspapers. And I started reading and I was like, awesome. So this is definitely something that has not been tapped into.”
“Al” is Allyn Lorde, a historian focused on the Ozarks feminist movement. In October 2000, Lorde and her colleague Anna Zajicek composed the oral history project: “History of the Contemporary Grassroots Women’s Movement in Northwest Arkansas from 1970-2000.” A portion of that project included a background on the 1976 Razordykes, in the context of the broader feminist movement of that time.
“The feminist movement in Fayetteville, in what's considered the second wave in the 1970's, was pretty vibrant. So there was a group, the Association for Women Students, that was formed back in the twenties and it was still alive, but not very active, but it was becoming more. And people, mostly women, were arguing for, let's do more.”
That desire to do more led to the establishment of the Women's Center on the University of Arkansas campus in 1972. Lorde says the Women’s Center has its own long history, but was the birthplace of several women's collectives across the university campus, including the Razordykes.
“Among the activities were a group of lesbians. There were many women who were interested in this, and so officially there was a group that was established called the Lesbian Rap Group. It was also known as the Fayetteville Lesbian Alliance.”
The group continued into the next semester, and eventually asked for funding from the associated student government.
“They put in a request for $15,000. It was a lark, and it was their surprise when they got funded for $386, which at the time was still a fair amount of money. That made the group official, if you will, the collective as part of the Women's Center.
“And there were four women who started it. And at the beginning they were talking about this lesbian rap group and it didn't sound like a good name. And so they were sitting around just talking, and one of the members suggested, she said, just throwing it out as a laugh, why not Razordykes? And everybody thought it was wonderful. And they decided to keep that name because it was just so wonderful.”
From then on, the Razordykes held weekly meetings, created a speaker’s bureau that attended classes on campus…
“They had obviously social events, and they had occasional campouts and things of that nature. So that was in the spring of ‘77 when they were funded. By ‘78, they started getting hate letters and other kinds of problems. Their meetings at the Women's Center were attended by groups that intended to find out more about this and shut them down, and those were groups like Vigil For Life, which was an anti-abortion group, and a group— at that time called flag— which was Family Life, America in God, at least those two groups.
“I think there were a few others who kind of infiltrated to find out more. And that spring of ‘78, a flyer for the Razordykes dance was anonymously sent to the wife of one of the UA trustees, and then it was sent on to the student Senate, who does the funding for student groups.”
Things escalated from there. A Razordyke meeting was secretly recorded and played for the Arkansas legislature and for then-governor Frank White.
“The opponents to this group said that these were university— that means taxpayer— funds were being used for subversion, and that the name Razordykes was an insult or a slander to Razorback athletics. So that's when we get much more knowledge, both in the university and especially in the community, where there was great anxiety about what was happening at their institution.”
The Razordyke's mission was, quote, “to help lesbians deal with social pressures concerning their lifestyle, and to promote a more positive and truthful image of lesbianism through educational programs.” The Women’s Center issued a statement of solidarity with the group, and both collectively denied requests from the university to change the name or to separate ties.
And though the Razordykes continued to face occasional bouts in the media or disapproving phone calls, they persisted until their eventual disbanding in 1980.
“During that funding period, again, Razordykes themselves, not the Women's Center, the Razordykes were denied funding and what they suggested was, and this happened through a lot of machinations around the university, but they suggested that they form an umbrella organisation that would include all women's organisations. And those would be other political organisations that were antithetical to the Women's Center Razordykes. But that never happened because it wouldn't have been…. Neither side would have appreciated it.
“And at this time the Razordykes were down to about four members. And so one, particularly not the group but one individual member, began to receive some threatening letters, phone calls and even had her house broken into. And so in November of 1980, given all of that, what was happening off campus, on campus, in the state legislature, in the university, trustees and hierarchies, the Razordykes decided to disband. So that November of 1980 was their last meeting.”
Almost fifty years later, Z Heater and Annalise Robbins started as friends and roommates with a common interest in Arkansas queer history.
“Z was like, ‘hey, do you know at the Razordykes?’ And I was like, of course I know about the Razordykes. Yes. And so we were chatting about that, and then Zella was like, oh my God. It'd be so cool to like, do something with it. And you had mocked up a bunch of merch in literally like Canva—”
“I was gonna say, like, literally that day on Canva, I was like, if the Razordykes had merch today, what would that look like? And I was just typing on my computer and I was like, look at how fun this merch is. Wouldn't it be crazy if that existed right now?”
Eventually, the pair attended several queer events during a summer in Nashville that pushed the needle forward.
“It seemed like almost every night we'd come home and we'd talk about the Razordykes or like Nashville queer history, or talking about Arkansas and how it's related. And we ended up going to a Dyke Jello wrestling event in Nashville, and we were like, it was very, very community. We were probably the only people who, like, didn't know anyone else.
“We were probably also the youngest people there, and we were 21. And so it was just very funny, like it was all older people, but like, nobody cared. It was very fun. Yeah, it was great. They had vendors—”
“It was very, very community based, though very, very intimate setting. But we came home that night and Annalise was like, okay, like we've been talking about, like, maybe bringing back the Razordykes. We saw how it could look if we did, like, jello wrestling. Like we got to bring this back.”
Robins says they had initial reservations about the university’s reaction, so they registered the student organization’s official name as “The Lesbian Student Alliance.” But true to the original group, they would be colloquially known as the Razordykes. And just like the original, they turned some heads from the get-go.
“I would say it took off with the Instagram. I didn't necessarily think that anyone was going to follow it. Really, we had some students and stuff like that who were interested in it. But whenever we first made like the first couple of posts, they were pretty eye grabbing, I would say. We were looking for a staff advisor. And so we put like on in big graphic letters, like, is your favorite professor a lesbo? And so people automatically were like, ‘oh’.”
Robbins says the group is an “all are welcome” space.
“However we are a place for sapphic-aligned folks and our Instagram is called the Razordykes. Inherently, we are going to be subversive no matter what. So we were like, if we're going to do this, let's go ahead and do this.”
Heater says the mission of today’s Razordykes align with the original one.
“And kind of the university side of it, our three main goals are education, connection and coalition building. And that's kind of what we have in our Constitution. But kind of with connection, it was important to connect students with the broader community. Like a lot of students at our first meeting, seeing our advisor, Ann, who is obviously an older lesbian, that's really important to a lot of students because they don't see older representation of elder queer people and stuff like that.”
Speaking of representation, Margaret Britian is an original member of the 1976 Razordykes. She agrees that community and connection was the most important thing of all.
“We felt a little stronger by being with each other and I think essentially and early on, that the importance of the group was essentially a support group. It was scary to come out as a lesbian in the 1970s. And of course, we had many steps and we would talk about it in coming out. There's coming out to yourself. And of course, we'd all done that. To maybe some close friends who may or may not be accepting, whether or not you came out to your parents was always a really big deal.
“And I knew one woman, not in the Razordykes, but who had been disowned by her family. Luckily, my family was pretty supportive, very supportive, actually. But just being able to talk about those experiences with each other was really important. So there was that aspect of the group really a support group. But we also, I'm quite sure, made ourselves available to the university community, particularly to a psychology or sociology class where the professor might be teaching about gay people. And we would go to them and say, look, if you want to have some out, gay people show up and speak to your class as a panel discussion and answer questions. We're here. We'll do it. And that was a pretty scary thing to do. But we did it together and I think that was an important thing to do.”
Britain says she was happy to hear the Razordykes are back at the University of Arkansas.
“I mean, that was just great. It sort of honored us. I liked that they took that term, which is a term of really strength and power in itself. It's too bad in a way. I mean, just historically that they need to be there. But I understand the need to support each other, especially as young women who are just beginning to figure out who they are and, and how to be in the world and how to be out in the world. And that's still a struggle. So it's still needed after all these years. We still have all of these struggles.”
Heater agrees the fears the original Razordykes had in the late ‘70s are very close to the fears young queer people feel today.
“The fact that those two things are very intrinsically tied to each other and that was over 40 years ago. But the fact that we're having the same conversations, and I'll go back and look in the archives and look at the transcripts from the women's project meetings where Razordykes were in attendance. And it's like word for word. I could take what they were saying 40 years ago and put it into a meeting today, and you'd probably be hearing the same conversations.
“I think for me, as somebody who studies history, going back in the archives and seeing how the original Razordykes talked about things and how they would problem solve, I think brings me a lot of solace knowing that, like, there are people before me who've experienced the same things, who have the same fears, but like 45 years ago, and we're having the same conversations.”
Heater says while they will continue to carry the legacy of the original Razordykes, they want to reflect a newer generation of queer people.
“What our intentions have been from the beginning and throughout, and talking with other lesbian students and at our meetings, it's very much been like we pay homage to the original Razordykes and we very much take their history and absorb as much as we can from it. But it isn't 40 years ago, and we are also new and evolved, and we've grown up in different times, and we want it to be our own 100%.
“And so yeah, everything we do is very much like we are treading on holy ground kind of thing whenever we talk about the original Razordykes. But yeah, we want our group to be different because it is a different time.”
You can find more information about the Razordykes, or the University of Arkansas’ Lesbian Student Alliance, on their Instagram.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
