WATCH: Robin Tyler's Rally Cry at Long Beach Dyke March

The pioneering lesbian feminist delivered an impassioned speech to kick off Pride Week in Long Beach, Calif.

Sunnivie Brydum

Sunnivie is the managing editor of The Advocate, and an award-winning journalist whose passion is covering the politics of equality and elevating the unheard stories of our community. Originally from Colorado, she and her spouse now live in Los Angeles, along with their three fur-children: dogs Luna and Cassie Doodle, and "Meow Button" Tilly.

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Sunnivie Brydum

May 20 2013 5:59 PM EST

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Approximately 200 people gathered in Long Beach, Calif., on Saturday to partake in the city's annual Dyke March, kicking off the city's 30th anniversary of Pride Week celebrations.

Pioneering lesbian feminist Robin Tyler illuminated for the crowd why she doesn't find the word "dyke" offensive. "I think it's great, because what a dyke is is a lesbian warrior," said Tyler. "It means rather than knocking on the door and saying 'please can we have our rights?' we kick in the door and demand our rights. That's a dyke."

Touching on the controversy surrounding the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival's policy excluding transgender women by admitting only "women born women," Tyler called for gender parity and solidarity.

"If a woman is born into a man's body, she is still a woman, and we need to tell that to the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival," said Tyler. "We do not have the right to define for other people how they identify from the gender perspective, and so I would like to welcome anybody that is in transition, has transitioned, or hasn't transitioned. Anybody that wants to march with the dykes, to fight back, to be political, to not take shit -- you're a dyke."