100 Women We Love, Queer Women We Love, Wonder Women

100 Women We Love 2012

June 15, 2012
“Knowing that my election showed Charlotteans and the world that we are not bound by discrimination wakes me every morning with pride,” proclaims LaWana Mayfield, the City Council representative for District 3 in Charlotte, NC, and the city’s first openly gay elected official. Last November, she trounced her Republican opponent in the council election with 78 percent of the vote, replacing an eight-year incumbent. Now, continuously building on her 15 years of activism, her other leadership posts include the Charlotte Mecklenburg Community Relations Committee, Mecklenburg County Development Corp. Board, Smart Start Board and the Charlotte Lesbian and Gay Fund Board of Advisors. Prior to the election, Mayfield took an active role in LGBT activism as the Human Rights Campaign’s Diversity Co-Chair. “I believe that my role, along with growing the City of Charlotte, is to open the door for LGBTQ dialogue and to create pathways to service. I have this amazing opportunity to help direct the growth of the City of Charlotte through my vote,” Mayfield says. “I am right where I am supposed to be, and I love my job!”

Drum roll, please! We’re excited to present this year’s 100 Women We Love—our most diverse group of out entertainers, artists, athletes, activists, business principals and elected officials yet. Each of these women is a superstar in her own right. Their achievements and contributions shape our lives —and elevate us in the eyes of the world . They’re working to raise LGBT awareness, increase our visibility and quicken our progress toward a just society.

We are extremely proud to present the class of 2012. There are no rankings or numbers. They are all leaders.

Madeleine Lim
“Art is activism—it’s an important part of any social justice movement. Artists need to be seen as leaders, not just the entertainment,” Madeleine Lim says. When she was 23, Lim fled her native Singapore to escape government persecution. Ten years later, she created and directed Sambal Belacan in San Francisco, a documentary film about queer Asian emigrants that is still banned in Singapore. The film’s impact, and her position as one of few queer women of color on the international film scene, prompted her to found Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (QWOCMAP). “I decided that by training other queer and transgender women of color, we could get more films out into the world. If our community creates our own films, then we have honest representations of who we are instead of destructive stereotypes. It empowers us to tell our own stories.” In addition, Lim’s own award-winning work has been screened in scores of festivals, and she has won dozens of grants and awards; she credits her butch-lesbian identity as the key. “Someone said to me, ‘Are all of your films going to be about Asian lesbians?’ and I said, ‘Well, why not? A number of Woody Allen’s films are about Jewish men in Manhattan, so what’s wrong with that? That’s who I am.”

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