There was someone missing from Pink News’ list of 11 LGBT heroes who made 2017 so much better: lesbians. to help them with their blind spot, here are 11 lesbians (in no particular order) who, I think, made 2017 way better:

1. Marcia Willis-Stewart QC, BSN lawyer of the year, fights for the civil liberties of individuals and their families against the state, those she has represented include the families of 77 of the victims of the Hillsborough disaster and Mark Duggan.
2. Hattie Hasan, schoolteacher turned plumber, set up Stopcocks, the first national network of women plumbers. She is a committed advocate for global water and sanitation issues.
3.  Susan Calman is a comedian and presenter who danced her way to week 10 of this year’s Strictly Come Dancing and quite possibly made a woman talking about her wife, a lesbian wearing a glittery frock and dancing with – shock horror – a man, seem unremarkable to a whole new audience.
4. Mhairi Black is the SNP MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire since 2015, she is currently the youngest member of the house of Commons, she is a strong critic of universal credit putting the fight against poverty central to her work.
5. Harriet Wistrich, Liberty Human Rights lawyer of the Year 2014, is co-founder of Justice for Women and Centre for Women’s Justice. She has fought for women who killed violent partners including Emma Humphreys and Stacey Hyde and also women attacked by the serial rapist John Warboys and victims of the Metropolitan Police spycops.
6. Sabrina Qureshi had a vision of the potential transformative power of women marching through the streets years before 2017’s Women’s March. She is founder and coordinator of Million Women Rise and annual march and celebration of international women’s day which marked its 10th anniversary in 2017.
7. Penny Wong is an Australian politician whose tears of joy when Australia voted yes to Equal Marriage contradicted her previously stated opposition to equal marriage and exemplifies how the weight of culture, religion and history distort personal choice and, people’s capacity for change.
8. Val McDermid is a crime writer and  Christmas University Challenge and Celebrity Mastermind ace.  She was the first woman from a Scottish state school to be admitted to St Hilda’s College, Oxford.
9. Julie Bindel is a journalist, co-Founder of Justice for Women and activist for the abolition of prostitution.  Her latest book, The Pimping of Prostitution, was released in October 2017.
10. Casey Stoney, footballer with Liverpool and England’s Women’s Team shows just how backwards men’s football is about sexuality.
11. Phyll Opuku-Gyimah is co-founder and executive director of UK Black Pride. She sits of the TUC race relations committee and refused an MBE in 2016’s New Year’s Honours list in protest of LGBTQI persecution by colonial regimes.