You have to read about these amazing, badass ladies. Fire eating became their symbol, here’s a blurb on its origin.
[It] grew out of tragedy. Last year, a lesbian and a gay man, Hattie Mae Cohens and Brian Mock, burned to death in Salem, Ore., after a Molotov cocktail was tossed into the apartment they shared. A month later, on Halloween, at a memorial to the victims in New York City, the Avengers (then newly organized) gave their response to the deaths. They ate fire, chanting, as they still do: “The fire will not consume us. We take it and make it our own.”
We had some Lesbian Avengers who used to march with us in the DC Dyke March back in the early 2000s. I remember, either my first or 2nd Dyke March (we’re talking like 2002, 2003), standing topless at the end of the march, in the rain (it had been cold and rainy all day), chanting that chant and eating fire. (I didn’t know they were Lesbian Avengers until I read this, actually. But I’ve never forgotten that chant.)
The fire-eating got mentioned in Dykes to Watch Out For but I never new the story behind it.
Mooncustafer 