Earlier this summer, Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors Fund and the Drake Law School united with the USDA to support a subset of the rural population that has often found itself erased: lesbian farmers.

Just one of a series of events designed to reach queer farmers and other LGBT people in rural areas, the event, which took place mid-August, inadvertently drew the nation’s attention to the incredible women working in agriculture today.

The event, for which Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was the keynote speaker, originally sought to help LGBT people to sign up for USDA programs like food stamps and housing loans, with “programs and services that exist to protect, promote, and strengthen LGBT members of rural communities,” according to a pamphlet provided by the USDA.

The summit sought to support the members of this subset of the rural community, who are often unaware that they have a right to these services.

“Contrary to widely held myths that the LGBT community is largely living in affluent metropolitan areas, studies show a very different and more realistic picture of the LGBT community,” the USDA said. “For a number of reasons, many people in the LGBT community choose to live, work, and raise their families in the rural communities that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is proud to serve.”

When he got wind of the summit, right-wing radio personality Rush Limbaugh came back with a mind-boggling response, calling the program an “attack” on what he has deemed the last conservative bastion: rural America.

“Here comes the Obama regime with a bunch of federal money and they’re waving it around, and all you gotta do to get it is be a lesbian and want to be a farmer and they’ll set you up,” Limbaugh ranted on the air. “I’m like you; I never before in my life knew that lesbians wanted to be farmers. I never knew that lesbians wanted to get behind the horse and the plow and start burrowing. I never knew it. … The objective here is to attack rural states.”

But Limbaugh’s view of rural areas is completely misguided, according to NBC News. Setting aside for a moment that most modern farmers have long since forgone the horse and plow, the USDA is not handing out subsidies to queer farmers, but rather guiding them toward programs already in existence to which they have a right. And to top it all off, no one is encouraging LGBT people to move to rural areas: they are already there.

“We have this perception that LGBT people leave rural areas and I think that’s not actually true,” said Naomi Goldberg, policy director for the Movement Advancement Project and a speaker at the Iowa LGBT Rural Summit. “Breaking the stereotype that LGBT people don’t live outside of cities is really important.”

Her research shows that 96 out of 99 Iowa counties are home to gay couples who are raising children. The largest proportional increase in same-sex couples in the 2000 census occurred in rural areas.

Limbaugh’s narrow view of the truth has set off an assortment of tributes to lesbian farmers, from a musical theater response created by Kathryn Lounsbery to “America Needs Lesbian Farmers” t-shirts.

Inadvertently, his tirade brought increased visibility, not only to this event, but to rural members of the LGBT community, bringing about the very reality that Limbaugh sought to criticize: members of the LGBT community who thought that the door to rural living was closed to them can now see the truth.

“It’s not just about acknowledging LGBT farmers,” Professor Colin R. Johnson, author of “Just Queer Folks: Gender and Sexuality in Rural America,” told NBC. “Its also about communicating to a generation of rural youth … of saying to people who are demonstrably leaving, that you can remain. You can remain and not be boxed into a kind of way of life before you have the opportunity to shape it.”

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Female farmer image via Shutterstock

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ColumnReading my 2nd grade diary, I was confronted with myself navigating girl world—and I have some words for Libby, Age 7.

I write a lot about the world today’s American girls are growing up in and how they are navigating girl world. The Disney princess-ification of girls’ toys, what advertising like Dove’s Real Beauty campaign tells them about femininity, what the dangers are of being a woman, slut-shaming and rape, to name a few. I usually don’t think about my own feminist views in terms of who I was as a girl.

However, on a recent trip to my parents’ house, I unearthed my 2nd grade diary, The Ramona Quimby diary. Based on the popular series of books by Beverly Cleary,  the diary was designed for young kids. It featured bits of the Ramonastories and fill-in-the-blank Q+As along with blank pages. 

Thankfully, my spelling has improved since I was a kid (or maybe it’s that spell check was invented), but, reading my own words, I can see that the core of who I am is kind of the same even though girl world is now, more or less, a woman’s world. I liked my friends, reading, writing, tumbling and drawing. I hated math and mentioned that a food I never even wanted to try was mayonnaise. All still true.

In the All About Me section, I reported that I had brown hair, green eyes, was 4’1” and weighed 48 lbs. Half of those things are still true. I said that if I could have a pet it would be a dog—and that I would name it Today. I can’t be sure if I meant that I would hustle to give the pooch a name quickly, or if I thought Today would be a good name for a dog. Given that I named our current dog Bucket, I feel it may be the latter.

When asked what I like about myself, I wrote that I am nice to people (piple) and that in the coming year I would like to be even nicer—and meet Cyndi Lauper (spelled correctly and the first of MANY Cyndi references).

A month later, I report that I get mad when my friends don’t do what I say, and that I spit in someone’s face after she spit in mine. I answered the question: Sometimes I feel sad because: Jess starts a fight. And responded to the prompt: When that happens, I cheer myself up by: Killing her. Yes. I really wrote that about Jess, a girl in my class who, in modern day times, I’d describe as a frenemy.

I see the mean girl version of myself emerging in these pages, replacing the nice kid I was at seven. I see myself being bossy and starting to rank friendships. I can also see how others were mean to me—and, thankfully, that on many days I was actually nice to people. My friendships were essential and ruled my emotions every single day. And 29 years later, my friendships with women are still central to my world.

I also found my favorite shirt. Thanks to the fact that we all wore giant clothes in the ’80s, it still fits—and goes well with the Dancin’ hat I often paired it with.

If I could talk to the second grade girl that I used to be, I’d tell her to take the bitchiness down a notch because if she doesn’t, others will do it for her in junior high and she’ll find herself friendless and lonely. I’d tell her that putting people down doesn’t bring her up. I would tell her to be more confident and do things even when she sucks at them—and to start yoga sooner rather than later. I would tell her that supporting other women is an important part of being the feminist she will become.

I would also mention that in 1993 she touches Cyndi Lauper’s hand, and though she just misses the chance to interview Cyndi in 2006, she hasn’t given up hope for a true meeting someday.

It’s an odd feeling to a glimpse into my own tiny head and realize that what I wanted then was pretty simple and matches up with what I still want: time with the people I care about, cookies and for people to be nice.

At the end of one month, the diary asks: What do you want next month? I wrote: A good month. At the close of another, the question is: What do you want to do next month? I wrote: I hope I do good. Still sounds about right.

Images: Libby Lowe

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