Ivy Bottini

Her memoir, The Liberation of Ivy Bottini: A Memoir of Love and Activism, as told to Judith V. Branzburg, was published by Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company in November, 2018.

Her papers and certain audio recordings are held by ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives. In 2009, the film On These Shoulders We Stand profiled Ivy Bottini as well as ten other LGBT activists from the early LGBT rights movement in Los Angeles. She participated in an Oral History project by The Lavender Effect, which documented her personal life and work as an activist. In her last known interview, Bottini spoke about her work on the podcast, LGBTQ&A.

In 2007, she received the Morris Kight Lifetime Achievement Award from Christopher Street West Los Angeles LGBT Pride.

In 2005, she was awarded the Cultural Icon Award from Tom of Finland Foundation.

In 2001, in the Matthew Shepard Memorial Triangle a tree was planted in her honor, and a plaque placed at the foot of it.

Also in 1999, she chaired the National Organization for Women's annual national conference, called Pioneer Reunion, in Beverly Hills. Shortly after, she co-chaired the Lesbian and Gay Advisory Board for the City of West Hollywood from 2000 to 2010. In 2001, she was part of a lesbian and gay rights coalition that formed the Alliance for Diverse Community Aging Services to help lesbian and gay seniors obtain assisted living and affordable retirement. In 2011, she designed t-shirts for the Dyke March in Los Angeles.

In 1998, the Ivy Theater was established in her honor in West Hollywood.

In 1993, she co-founded the nonprofit organization Gay & Lesbian Elder Housing, which in 2007 developed Triangle Square, the first affordable housing complex for gay and lesbian senior citizens in the country. From 1998 until 1999, she co-chaired the addiction and recovery city task force, and established the ad hoc committee City of West Hollywood, to publicize the issue of lesbian and gay partner abuse.

In 1991, she received Drama Logues' "Best Performance Award" for Against the Rising Sea.

She moved to Los Angeles in 1971. There she founded AIDS Network LA, the first AIDS organization in Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Lesbian/Gay Police Advisory Board. In 1977, she created and hosted the first Lesbian/Gay radio show on a mainstream network (KHJ in Los Angeles). In 1978, she was the Southern California deputy director of the successful campaign against the Briggs Initiative (No on 6), which would have banned gays and lesbians from teaching in California's public schools. She later chaired the successful No on LaRouche and No on 64 Initiative campaign. The Larouche initiative (Number 64), which was not passed, might have quarantined people with AIDS. In 1981 she was appointed by then-governor Jerry Brown as Commissioner for "California Commission on Aging", making her the first "out" lesbian or gay person to be appointed to a state board or commission. In 1983 she co-founded AIDS Project Los Angeles.

While Kate Millett was speaking about sexual liberation at Columbia University in 1970, a woman in the audience asked her, "Why don't you say you're a lesbian, here, openly. You've said you were a lesbian in the past." Millett hesitantly responded, "Yes, I am a lesbian". A couple of weeks later, Time's December 8, 1970 article "Women's Lib: A Second Look" reported that Millett admitted she was bisexual, which it said would likely discredit her as a spokesperson for the feminist movement because it "reinforce[d] the views of those skeptics who routinely dismiss all liberationists as lesbians." In response, two days later a press conference was organized by Bottini and Barbara Love in Greenwich Village which led to a statement in the name of 30 lesbian and feminist leaders which declared their "solidarity with the struggle of homosexuals to attain their liberation in a sexist society".

Years later, a coworker, Delores Alexander, introduced Bottini to the National Organization for Women (NOW). Alexander had just interviewed the NOW president Betty Friedan, and felt it would be a useful organization for Bottini to join. Bottini helped found the New York chapter of NOW in 1966. Soon after becoming president of the New York chapter of NOW in 1968 she came out as a lesbian. She left her husband and moved in with a woman in New York City.

Despite her attraction to women, Bottini did not pursue lesbian relationships, due to cultural norms of the time. She was engaged to several men, with each engagement lasting only a few weeks before she'd end the relationship. She married her husband of sixteen years, Eddie, on January 12, 1952. Leading up to the marriage, Bottini began experiencing physical symptoms involving her ability to swallow food properly. Her doctor realized her symptoms were related to anxiety and referred her to a psychiatrist. She expressed to the psychiatrist that she felt attracted to women, but the psychiatrist told her she was not homosexual. He suggested she abandon her friends and interests and "cleave" to soon to be husband, Eddie. She did as her psychiatrist instructed, but her lesbian desires did not subside.

Ivy Bottini (August 15, 1926 – February 25, 2021) was an American activist for women's rights and LGBT rights, and a visual artist.