I’ve been queer for as long as I can remember, but my earliest crushes were definitely on boys. Of my first crush in the fifth grade, I wrote in my diary, “When he smiles at me I feel like he is lighting up the dark side of the moon.” That feeling of attraction was real (and foreshadowed a lifelong practice of loving and writing from it!). I am not opposed to the bisexual label or here to negate its validity. I dream of a world without labels at all. But some time ago, I chose to start identifying and living as a lesbian. I was empowered by a rising tide of lesbian visibility to take the plunge into an identity I had previously believed was lonely, restrictive, or puritanical. (I fell for some propaganda, I fear.) Becoming a lesbian opened new portals in my heart and life. I knew what I was rejecting — men — but I couldn’t have imagined what I am accepting instead. I am still untangling its beauty.
It sounds silly to say, but my last straw was a pregnancy scare. I’d had numerous negative experiences with men in college, some even traumatic, but I managed to recover from them, to keep an open heart. Although I primarily dated women, I had, in some way, accepted occasional violence as an occupational hazard of dating men, of the sexual liberation I was lucky to have. I thought I could roll with the punches, stay in the ring. But I had to take a Plan B because of a dumb man who had bell hooks on his bookshelf. My stomach was cramping like an omen from God, and I thought, never again. This was shortly after the fall of Roe v Wade, putting everyone with a uterus at the mercy of men and the state, and I felt, with sudden certainty, that men were no longer worth it. I did not want to play this incredibly rigged game. (I’ve seen similar sentiments expressed by women calling for a 4B movement after Trump’s re-election.) That’s why I stepped away.
When I moved to New York, I was determined to be gay, as a lifestyle. To join a long lineage of women and queers who make tender love and mischief, build worlds against violence, towards equality, until even the slurs hurled against us lose wind, can be recast, joyously, like confetti. I enjoy the gender buffet in a way that feels similar to my enlightened bisexual sisters. I have dated the whole range — the ones with long hair and shimmery lips that proudly claim the word “dyke.” The loping, boyish ones, the ones who’ve shorn their hair or breasts, wearing their difference like courage. The ones who move with a touch of the otherworldly, their gender alien — they make you look twice. I love when people don’t fit in and have probably never tried. I love the push-and-pull of courting and being courted. The mercy of the first kiss. I discovered lesbian culture online, through screens, but it is different when you can touch, feel, thumb through lovers like the pages of books. Indeed, this world I previously only read about, it has scooped me in its jaw, stuns me with its vibrancy. I love women and queer people, but the things I love about them could feasibly belong to any gender. There is little these people have in common — not their bodies, energies, or personalities — except the condition, in some way, of refusal.
It is a condition of existing in opposition to patriarchy — as its victim, or mortal foe, depending on who you ask, rather than its perpetrator, or beneficiary — that I find incredibly hot. This is why (I’m happy to report) I have never crushed on a straight woman in my life. Not all women are enemies of patriarchy. There are many women, sometimes due to race or class identities, whose interests feel unsexily oriented towards the patriarchy. There are, similarly, men who have a stake in dismantling it, or at least can recognize its effects, and with these men, I can usually catch a vibe.
To be clear: I don’t hate men. Decentering is not demonizing. Although you will not catch me spilling ink over men — at least not since my pre-pubescent diary — I see their humanity. The dignity of fathers in Palestine, protecting and grieving their children amid unfathomable violence. The sort of grown men who give their seats, speak up, help carry heavy things. My sweet, ridiculously handsome gay male friends. This morning, I saw a group of long-legged teenage boys at the subway station. Gracefully, one of them stepped over the turnstile and then opened the door for the rest of us. I had never seen such a casual display of chivalry. There are moments I am taken by the grace of men, even as I choose not to center them.
I understand why people are often outraged at the idea of “choosing” your sexuality. For a long time, gay people were criminalized and ostracized (we still are), and the way you’d insist you were still worthy of care and protection was by claiming you couldn’t help who you were. “Born this way” discourse had its moment, but I think it frames queerness as an unhelpable accident of your birth and not a wonderful, principled choice you could make for yourself. I choose to loudly and decisively align myself with other women, because I think it helps all of us, especially straight women. Far from gatekeeping, I want to open the wide house of queerness to them.
The truth is, my straight friends are struggling. There’s been a “crisis of heterosexuality” among my generation, a widening gap between young men and women in metrics like political views, education, and achievement. Gen Z women are uniquely screwed, because we’ve experienced enough material advancement that we don’t need men and can in fact demand better of them. But Gen Z men haven’t caught up and shifted their behaviors accordingly. What’s more, movements like #MeToo, rather than nudging men towards the decent people we need them to be, have provoked profound backlash. I’ve seen the smartest minds of my generation, as the saying goes, taken down by the impossibility of reconciling their feminist principles with the reality of losers in their DMs. For many of my dearest friends, the solution, more or less, is decentering men. Close female friendships and rose toys must do the job, at least for now. Many generations of women prior, we suspect, would have chosen celibacy and a career over being bound to wifehood. For their sake — and ours — some straight women are trying to hold the line. Can we have a little honorary lesbian commotion for them?
It’s easy for me, at 24, to hold out in my principles. I wonder what will happen when I get older. Our society has made it very structurally difficult for me to envision a life outside of partnership with a man. Unless a squillion of you buy my books or I get hit by an MTA bus and sue, I don’t think I can ever raise a family by myself in New York, my chosen home. I don’t blame those who can’t hold out: Being a lesbian is not for the weak. Most often, we speak of the financial disadvantage when you refuse male money: My friends joke that you need an actual line-item in your budget for lesbian dating. But also, there’s an erasure of your humanity when you step out of patriarchy’s blinding searchlights. Recently, a masc friend of mine described a humbling interaction where a man totally looked over her, only addressing her more femme friend. Since she clearly wasn’t for him, it was like she didn’t exist at all. (I’ve heard women describe a similar devaluing when they start to visibly age.) I’ve felt it too, even as a young feminine woman, the door that shuts in a man’s face when I reveal, mid-conversation, that I’m gay. My opinion matters less to him now. That shit hurts.
I wish there were more spaces to name and strategize the realities of lesbian existence. To truly, joyously, commit to the bit. We are under attack. An Indigenous man was murdered this very Pride Month, and authorities won’t categorize it as a hate crime. The endless discourse each year about bisexual erasure, splitting hairs between bisexual and lesbian identity, strikes me as selfishly concerned with cosmetic questions of “inclusion” and “validity,” the politics of who can post up online, enjoy our parties, or profit from the culture versus who is boots-on-the-ground, taking risks, advancing, and protecting us. (Previous generations didn’t care very much about the distinction between sapphic labels, but I suspect that as queerness has become a less political, more palatable identity, an insistence on individual queer identities, personal comfort, and self-labels arises to water us down). Either way: the queers I align with don’t have time to bully your boyfriend if he comes to Pride, because we have bigger fish to fry. Babes, we’re building a better world.
My mid-twenties have been characterized by continuous moments of refusal to systems and mindsets I cannot abide. My proudest quitting moment, more than quitting men, was swearing off Amazon because of how it mangles our relationship to consumption at the cost of the environment. Movements like BDS have taught us the power of refusal and redirection, collective pressure to make change. I have the privilege to ponder and mold a life in accordance with my values. Against all odds, I am 24, hot, financially independent, living in the Global North, beholden to no authority but my mom. I want to use the tools at my disposal to put up a fight. What we tend to grows, and I choose to pour my immense creativity, love, and care into uplifting women, especially the ones I love platonically — not people I deem my oppressor. As my dear friend recently told me, in a gay appropriation of George Bush: “We do not negotiate with terrorists.” Patriarchy is the terror. I want to terrorize it back.
Autostraddle’s Pride 2025 theme is DEVIANT BEHAVIOR. Read more, and be deviant!
Oh so we’re just endorsing political lesbianism now? Something that has been widely criticized as a complete disaster every time it had been tried? Cool.
how is *one person’s account of their own personal life and decisions*, shared here in a personal essay, an endorsement of political lesbianism for an entire community? are we unable as a people to hear perspectives and stories from people who don’t align with our own ideas of how we want to live our own personal lives?
I just think it’s funny how actual lesbians breath anything that sounds remotely like separatism and get raked over the coals for it. But somehow it’s laudable when other do it.
who is lauding what? who is raking who over the coals and where? the author is not raking anyone over the coals. you were the first comment on the post, so you weren’t responding to any lauding. who is not an actual lesbian? if the author is technically attracted to men in some way but has chosen instead to center her life on lesbian culture and with women. you can disagree with her but let’s not mischaracterize the impact of a woman, any woman, simply speaking her truth.
separatism has its own interpretations, too. in this essay she doesn’t say there isn’t room for different people in her queer community, regardless of who she is choosing to date or love or center personally. she even literally endorses bisexual women bringing their boyfriends to pride. maybe the version of separatism that gets people “raked over the coals” is one that turns someone’s personal choices for their own life and love into rules for who is and isn’t “allowed” in the community overall.
Exactly. Just look at the comments demonizing any lesbian who dares to disagree that you can’t simply wake up one day and call yourself a lesbian when you’re bisexual. It’s not the same thing. But god forbid lesbians weigh in and disagree with this take. Once again, lesbians are being called the big bad meanies who exclude everyone else. Being born a lesbian and choosing this label even when you’re not actually a lesbian is so ridiculous. Way to trivialize everything that actual lesbians have to deal with. Why can’t you simply identify with your actual attraction to men and women instead of taking a label that doesn’t actually fit you? Words have meaning. Lesbian doesn’t mean attracted to men and women.
Being a lesbian isn’t a decision though. It’s dangerous to frame it this way. It’s dangerous and harmful to view our lives and existences as some sort of mischievous club that people can use and choose to be apart of for their own liberation without care about how viewing our sexuality (a fundamental part of who we are as human beings) as a something to opt in and out of.
People are allowed to be upset by this narrative and framing especially in this political climate.
yeah and why the fuck not? lesbianism is lesbianism political or not. being lesbian in many parts of the world tends to automatically politicize your identity anyways. yolo
That’s not what political lesbianism is. It’s non lesbians appropriating the lesbian identity in an attempt to make a separatist political statement, not real lesbians being aware and involved politically.
Political lesbianism doesn’t apply to women who are actually attracted to women, whether they’re bi/pan, your definition of lesbian, or the author’s definition of lesbian. Political lesbianism applies to straight women who are taking on a lesbian lifestyle just for the sake of feminism, not love or attraction. This author is clearly attracted to and loves women.
So you think all gays should be put into conversion camps since you think it’s a choice?
Agreed. This whole article about lesbianism was all about men ironically lol. Idek if this person has even dated a woman or not. She defined being a lesbian as dating everyone except for cis men……
a lesbian is someone not attracted to men. you are attracted to them and were actively dating men. and you chose to “become a lesbian” because… you had a pregnancy scare from a consensual sexual encounter with a man? i just dont know abt this one. what is stopping you as a… voluntary lesbian(?) from choosing to date men again? the label just doesnt fit you. if you dont like labels you dont have to use them! but i respect your advocacy for the queer community
I’m enjoying this series of personal essays! This one gave me a lot to think about – I made a very different choice in my 20s (3 decades ago!). I may come back and share a bit of my queer identity journey but just wanted to thank the author for this.
It’s great you personally have a choice. I never did. I was born a lesbian. There is not a single part of me that finds men attractive.
I didn’t have my first date until I was in my junior year of college. I was 20. Where I grew up, if they knew you were a lesbian, they’d try and fix you. Yes, they really would. The intimidation and fear they spewed from their hateful lips was something that will forever stay with me. All the “is she gay,” girls would lie and say they were dating someone. I was one of those that lied and said I had a boyfriend. My friend’s brother would play along and say we were dating, because he was one of the good ones. We’d go out to the movies or a school dance. When he actually found a girl he liked, we fake broke up. By then, I was a senior, and he was a sophomore, so it didn’t matter. Our fake two-year faux-ship ended.
If I had a choice, I wouldn’t choose this…
Sorry — wasn’t replying to hit. Hit the wrong dang reply button. My bad. 😞
Thanks for clarifying!
thank you for this. i appreciate autostraddle giving me exposure to ideas and testimonies from all different types of queer people who come to their identities and experiences differently, even when those stories don’t align with my own life or experiences. i love to hear from younger generations about how they see themselves.
if there’s anything negative to say about the LGBTQ+ community it’s that we don’t make more space for different people to identify the way that makes sense to them without seeing these personal choices as threats.
This article is disgusting. Bisexuals falsely claiming to be lesbians is harmful to lesbians. Being a lesbian isn’t a choice. This reeks of political lesbianism.
I love how many of us (gen z folks) fantasize about getting lightly hit by public transit for financial gain
I am all on board for both sexuality and gender being choices about our lives we embrace when we decide to be ourselves.
But… it’s pretty transphobic / gender-essentialist to boil down dating men to an inherent pregnancy risk? There are both cis and trans men who can’t impregnate anyone, and there are trans women who haven’t medically transitioned who can. Transphobia and trans erasure is not a good look, to put it mildly.
yes, this stood out to me as well
yeah i’m a trans d*ke who saw this on instagram and it made me so irritated that i had to comment. i’m bisexual and parts of what they’re saying resonate with me (i don’t really go for men, cis or trans), but it is so transmisogynistic to go on and bring up this 4b stuff. how vapid to do this in the current political climate. but i’m glad that some cis girl can write something that 392929 other gay women have said before and think that she’s rocking the boat
Is it transmisogynistic? I don’t see how building a lesbian/feminist movement to decenter men excludes trans women. And the author mentions in multiple places that she has dated a variety of queer and non-binary people, not just cis women. And while her concerns re: pregnancy and the loss of Roe v. Wade are relevant to her argument, they aren’t her only criticism with men or reason for not wanting to date them.
I’ts not the inherent risk. She’s talking about a traumatic experience she had that she did not want to experience again.
Perhaps the musings of a very young person should be better honed in a diary before becoming a personal essay. There’s something so ghoulish about bringing up the masculinity of Palestinian men as an example of men you do tolerate- haven’t they suffered enough before getting mentioned for two seconds in a navel-gazing essay?
Right? The whole thing is so gross and self centered.
“the musings of a very young person should be better honed in a diary”
You could critique her essay w/o making it into ageist gatekeeping.
Grim
So, uh. We’re mad about one woman talking about her own lived experience? Did I miss this line item in The Agenda?
Thank you for sharing your story, I’m sorry you’re getting so much hate in the comments, I’m not sure why. I made some similar choices, although personally I do identify as bisexual. When I was dating, I made the decision at a certain point not to seek out men as partners because it felt like men were, on average, putting in so little effort. I figured if I met a man organically and we hit it off then so be it, but it wasn’t something I was going to pursue. My wife is also bisexual but felt similarly. Neither of us hate men or want to live without men in our lives. We have a little boy, so spending time with the men in our lives is actually important to us to make sure he has strong male role models. But due to patriarchal norms dating men has its drawbacks and I thinking choosing to forgo that when you have other options is understandable.
I love this! ❤️
“This is why (I’m happy to report) I have never crushed on a straight woman in my life.”
Wow, gobsmacked. Lucky you.
I wish I could tell my libido, “Shaddup, you don’t know if she’s Into Women or Not!”
And my gaydar has never been THAT attuned. If I like her, if she’s nice, all I can do is Make An Approach (that is, a BUILD-UP to asking her out!), and go from there.
And my batting average sadly shows that I was “crushing on a straight woman.”
Being a lesbian isn’t about “committing to the bit” and lesbians don’t worry about “holding out” from giving in to men and patriarchy. Do you know why? Because they’re fucking lesbians!
“Born this way” is not just a rhetoric to escape being demonized for your identity, it’s an insistence that your identity is valid and legitimate. So many harmful cultural narratives already perpetuate the idea that lesbians can choose to be attracted to men if they want to, that lesbianism is a phase, and that lesbians can be “flipped.”
I am a lesbian. I’ve never been attracted to men. And I never will be. Read about the history of political lesbianism and write in a journal next time, maybe.
Plus one to the commenter who spoke about how icky it is to naval gaze about Palestinian men as an acceptable form of masculinity.
As a Millennial lesbian who came of age in rural, Christian America in the 00s – who spent sleepless nights at 14 trying to pray away the gay and wondering if she’d be damned to hell if she ever acted on these feelings and swore not ever to, whose father-figure former pastor ghosted her when she came out, who had family friends cut off not just her but her whole extended family, who turned down a mentor’s offer to write a recommendation to West Point because of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, who survived several suicide attempts from shame and rage and loneliness, who is approaching 40, has still never had a relationship last more than 6 months, regularly spends 5-10 years at a time single and celibate because it’s so goddamn hard to trust people – my lesbianism has been a life-defining, hard-earned battle scar.
It’s wonderful, of course, that not everybody has to go through what I went through to claim this identity. On the other, I’m weirdly threatened and repulsed by the idea of trying on sexualities like fashion accessories and choosing the one most politically convenient. I’ve often opined how much happier I would be if I were asexual/aromantic, but alas, I’m not.
Treating identities like fashion accessories is such a good way to put it and is exactly the problem I have with this! I was born a lesbian, it is an intrinsic part of myself that I am a woman who is wired to only love other women. I wouldn’t have it any other way, I love being a lesbian, but I don’t appreciate the core of my being being cheapened down to some aesthetic. It’s not a switch I can flip on and off because I am actually a lesbian, not someone who just decides to appropriate identities that don’t belong to me for the fun of it.
“I am actually a lesbian, not someone who just decides to appropriate identities that don’t belong to me”
You do not get to choose who is and isn’t a lesbian (:
Someone “choosing” to be a lesbian obviously means they aren’t one, by their own admission. I did not choose to be a lesbian, I don’t have the capacity to be anything else! Hope this helps.
It doesn’t really help. There are many ways to be a lesbian, one of them is your way (being born this way) and one of them is the author’s (choosing it).
Lmao. That’s not how sexuality works. You can choose whoever to date, but if your attraction isn’t only lesbian, they definitionally, neither are you.
Arguing someone can CHOOSE to be a homosexual is quite literally violent homophobic rhetoric that puts all of us in danger.
There’s no way this won’t sound weird so I’ll just stumble my way into it, but I really wanna be your friend.. or maybe not friend, but I really wanna add you to the list of little queer people that live in my phone and I get to talk to sometimes because I think we have a bunch of similarities and some differences already and I think we could talk to eachother in a way that is sort of difficult to do with other people.
So allow me to sell you on this pitch (that of course you can totally ignore, of course, because It will come of as strong and weird but you’ll see why hopefully).
I’m turning 34 this year and I find it surreal, and it’s not just getting older thing, it’s that I’ve had depression for so long I’m honestly baffled I made it this far. And you’re almost 40 and from the little I know of you, I’m so genuinely happy you’re here still. I’m being totally selfish about it because I really do want to you more but we’re running the same marathon and you’ve been doing it longer and that’s worth fucking celebrating even if it a stranger online giving you an winded and weird thumbs up.
From your message you sort traced lesbianism as the main root of your depression and I have ADHD and I’m an artist so you know .. I get it but hey I have some unhinged very specific situations that are similar but also not… so I’m honestly either the best person to talk to or the worst or maybe both?
Now that we’re being weird, I would be friends with either of you if you were down! I’m a 35-year-old bi trans guy who identified as a lesbian for a lot of his life, I grew up in a red state with a homophobic (although not particularly religious) family in the 00s, and I have a ridiculous koosh ball of comorbid mental illnesses keeping me from living a normal life but I’m still here anyway. I also try to make off-putting indie games – haven’t finished anything yet, but it could be an interesting friend trait. My toxic qualities are that I get really annoying about my anti-censorship beliefs and I’m overly invested in a bunch of objectively basic m/m ships. I’m lambswithguns at gmail let’s goooooooo
I thin the key here is “It’s wonderful … that not everybody has to go through what I went through to claim this identity”.
Yes, it is! And it doesn’t take away from your suffering.
Some of these comments are just wild. To say that if you could you’d choose differently and be attracted to guys because the world is/was that homophobic and shitty… Jesus, I know it’s really hard under these circumstances, but please try to find some jouyous community and learn to love who you are??? This author also literally already experiences homophobia, and identifying as bisexual and dating men wouldn’t change that (unless she would completely swear off of dating woman and center men completely, which y’all seem to think is the ‘correct’ alternative?? What feminist praxis!!!)
I’ve been very lucky and came through a millenial coming of age in a very homophobic time without any trauma or scars around it. I, in a way, also ‘chose’ to be gay, in the sense that I learned a lot about gayness on the internet (hi Autostraddle of half my lifetime ago! Hi my mom looking at the browser history and finding “effingdykes.blogspot
com” while I was still in the closet, WHOOPS!!!) and ‘decided’, in a way that this was me, this was the life I wanted to live, these were my people. I never was going to be able to have a straight relationship because unlike this author, I didn’t really feel attraction to men. But that aspect of it seems to be a ridiculous way to want to universally describe lesbian experiences. Yes, it is part of it for many. Yes, that is challenging, because homophobia is a bitch. But what about joyously choosing to honour your attraction (to NOT guys!!!!!), to resist patriarchy, to stand with those of us who are too butch to ever be taken seriously by straight guys and yourself one of us?? Is that not what you want the essence of your lesbianism to me, rather that saying if you could be bisexual you would because the world is just so scary and terrible? I also think if that is your view you don’t understand bi people’s struggles and it is clear you don’t understand how deeply the two communities are intertwined anyway. None of this is “political lesbianism”, this is a queer person finding joy and empowerment and resistance in being queer, something we can all aspire to.
Thank you Pallas!
yes thank you pallas for this take! i don’t understand the vile in these comments myself. why does the queer community always go after each other like this? we have to figure out how, as a community, to feel triggered by something and then to process that experience ourselves with curiosity instead of lashing out at someone who unintentionally triggered us just by sharing their own identity and experience.
Maybe lesbians are just tired of being treated like some cute aesthetic for others to appropriate instead of, you know, a sexuality and identity in our own right that deserves to be respected.
Literally HOW does this have anything to do with a “cute aesthetic”? Nothing in this article is about aesthetics! This author writes about centering women, not dating men, feeling solidarity with fellow dykes, resisting the patriarchy, political mobilization. In my comment I wrote about choosing to honour one’s attraction, resisting patriarchy, standing with those of us who are too butch to ever be taken seriously by straight guys and calling oneself one of us (at least I tried to write about that. I was very sleep deprived and somehow my typing was uh. Very Compromised.).
When I was an insecure fucking teenager I used to get upset about things like this (yeah, I was one of those fucking idiots going “asexuals aren’t queer”, too). I think YOU are the one disrespecting lesbianism by insisting that it’s more about whether you can get it up for a guy and less about, you know, HONOURING YOUR ATTRACTION TO WOMEN and the POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS THEREOF. God, y’all are ridiculous. Here is a young person joyfully and proudly proclaiming her lesbianism and you’re just shitting on it because she’s not miserably wishing she had an out but rather she is actively choosing to live like this. Author, if you ever decide that the label “bisexual” describes you better, I will still love and welcome you with open arms, but right now I’m so glad you’re a lesbian!
Maybe cute aesthetic is the wrong word. Maybe more a costume that you can change in and out of at will is a better metaphor.
If you like non lesbians appropriating the lesbian label, I guess I can’t stop you. I just think it does more harm than good and people like this author create division in the community by treating lesbian as an “option” and not an identity. I dont get on board with anyone who thinks you can choose your way in to lesbianism, because that would mean you could choose your way out. And I strongly oppose conversion therapy rhetoric wherever I find it.
Born this was is still how so many of us experience our identities and have the courage to come out. I don’t appreciate that being shat on. I love being a lesbian, I would never choose to be any other way even if I could (but I cant) but realizing we don’t have a choice is a part of every lesbian I know’s journey. It would be entirely possible for the author to center queerness without appropriating labels.
Okay but how is walking the walk like this author is, structuring her entire life around lesbian community and completely refusing to center men in any way, a costume? To me lesbianism is as much about some internal core of attraction as it is about actually DOING something with it.
I understand that the born this way narrative feels like a safety net from conversion therapy narratives, and I certainly do not want to shit on it. I just don’t think it’s the only way. To me… I was born as a baby. And I up grew into a lesbian. And there’s a bunch of gender things going on too that I don’t want to get into here. But I feel like “appropriating” the lesbian label looks very different from what is being described in this piece.
I can feel your pain from your comments and I can sympathize with it and I do not want to disregard it in any way. I just wish that being a lesbian didn’t HAVE to have such a feeling of doom attached to it. For me it truly was joyous to find out that I could just be gay, and I would never ever have to be in a straight relationship ever again. It never felt like I didn’t “have a choice”, it felt like my world opened up with a beautiful new possibility. A life of hardship and discrimination, but also of being ME, and being with my people. I think that there are so many different ways to come at it, and that this author’s perspective is valid. I also don’t think that this is what homophobes look to as ‘evidence’ that people can choose to want guys. I also don’t think that what homophobes do is this person’s responsibility.
Also just want to reiterate that there WAS homophobia in my experience too. I was still very nervous about coming out and it all was a process that lasted years. I just don’t think that being forced to go through that and knowing that I would never be happy in a straight relationship was the one defining factor of my lesbianism.
Reached the limit of comments nesting, Oops. I mean, the author literally implies maybe one day going back to men for convenience, that does not read as inherently lesbian to me. That reads as, again, putting on a costume.
I think you’re projecting a lot of other comments on to me. I did not feel “doom” about being a lesbian, I felt so much joy and relief. And most of the joy was realizing there were other people like me out there and I wasn’t broken for being incapable of hetero relationships. I could follow my heart and find other people that understood me and my boundaries.
The author seems to look down her nose at people like me, she’s the one assigning negativity to the “unhelpable circumstances of birth” that I take joy in. I take issue that only her in her “choice” is capable of being happy. She’s not more enlightened for being capable of attraction to men, and I don’t appreciate the condescension inherent in the piece.
And whenever this gets brought up (so and so isn’t responsible for homphobes) I always feel like you’re thinking of cartoonishly evil villains. And not the fact that people actually in the LGBT community are capable of homophobia. Some of the worst homophobia and violence I’ve experienced has been from those within the community, unfortunately. And this author adds to it.
Yeah, you’re right, I think I did kind of put all the negative comments on one heap in my mind. Sorry about that! I still got a bit of a doom-impression from your comments too with the whole “every lesbian realizes we don’t have a choice” thing, but definitely I see what you mean. Thanks for pointing that out.
Also thanks for sticking with this discussion and continuing to give your perspective, I definitely get it a lot more now. I didn’t get this condescending, “enlightened” vibe from this piece at all, nor the idea that the author would be going back to men for convenience’s sake, but I can see how reading it like that would feel incredibly shitty and homophobic and like a slap in the face of other lesbians. I also have experienced homophobia in queer community (like.. a lot!) and definitely agree that it’s possible and there doesn’t need to be any cartoony villainy going on for it to happen, I think we just had a very different read on how respectful or disrespectful this author was being in her writing.
I just wanna say I really appreciate you hearing me out. It does seem like we had a different read but I’m glad we could have a discussion on the different things we were getting from the piece.
<3
just a reminder that while political lesbianism is unfortunately gaining mainstream influence again. the founders of the original political lesbianism movements are all terfs.
One reason I didn’t come out for a couple of years was that I perceived lesbians to be mean and and judgemental and gatekeeping. I was reminded of that when I read some of the comments here, and I am really glad that I am sure of who I am today because younger me would have really spiralled reading what a number of commenters had to say.
I have one (1) friend who knew to be a lesbian as a teen, and never being involved with cis men. All my other friends who today identify as lesbians dated men, had long relationships with men at some point earlier in their lives, and these relationships were not a lie. None of them identify as bisexual today (while people with similar experiences do). For my friends, there was a choice, and that was the case for me as well. We wouldn’t have died by suicide had we stayed with men. We could have had moderately okay lives. But now there is lesbian euphoria! However, all of us have internalized that there is something wrong with us because we didn’t “know” as a child. Or a young teen. This trope is really hurtful because it excludes many people’s lives.
For some queer people, there is no choice. I get that! And that they wouldn’t choose if they could, given all the hate they have experienced!
I like that people contain multitudes. And how varied lesbian/ queer experiences are. I don’t get why some people demand every queer person to fit into a specific and tiny box, and if you don’t, you cannot be (in their eyes) who you identify as.
No one is taking away anyone’s experiences just because someone else’s experiences are different. There is space enough for variety.
Thank you for sharing, Malavika. I’m sorry for all the mean things people write here.
Lesbian doesn’t mean attracted to men and women. Why is bisexual or pansexual or queer or sapphic ignored in favor of taking a label to identify as something she actually isn’t. It’s not “judgmental and gatekeeping” to acknowledge the reality that she’s not a lesbian because she’s also attracted to men. Words have meaning.
“Previous generations didn’t care very much about the distinction between sapphic labels…”
I think that depends on the time. Some dykes in “Dykes to Watch Out For” by Alison Bechdel (who started the comic strip in 1987) were really mean about women who had previously identified as lesbians and then started identifying as bi. And in “Go Fish” (1994), a lesbian community reacts intensively judgemental when one of them has sex with a man and does not identify as bi. Both are fictionalized examples of what the writers and film makers witnessed in their own communities in the 1980s and 90s; how lesbians cared very much about the distinction between labels; and how strongly gatekeeping was enforced.
Reading the comments here and beneath similar AS articles, I am disheartened how little seems to have changed regarding lesbians’ judgementalism.
“Lesbians’ judgmentalism. “ It’s always astounding to me how when lesbians voice their opinions they’re demonized for it . Acknowledging the correct label for a woman who isn’t a lesbian but is actually bisexual isn’t being judgmental, it’s acknowledging reality. Your comment seems quite judgmental of lesbians who don’t simply “choose” to be lesbians like you choose to put on a sweater.
I mean this both lovingly and respectfully: to wax rhapsodic about choosing to be gay and all of the thought and conviction you’ve invested in this choice, and then follow that up with the assertion that you can’t even imagine having a family with a woman barring some strange and improbable financial windfall and maybe–“I wonder what will happen…” and all–you won’t even be able to afford to stay lesbian when you’re no longer young and carefree, is wild. also, funny. I sincerely hope that your mid-to-late 20s bring you more encounters with gay women in committed relationships and expand your horizons even further. :)
Autostraddle, why the hell are you publishing a 24 year old bisexual who just experienced a pregnancy scare? This belongs on Substack.
Congratulations, autostraddle, you got a click and a comment, because this article is factually wrong. CHOOSING between men and women to be a lesbian is… bisexual. Everyone knows this! I am now complicit in your ragebait tactics and I am officially part of the problem. I expected this shit from a lot of bad news outlets, but autostraddle?
You don’t have to be a lesbian to not date men. You don’t to be a lesbian for magical queer doors to open into the world of loving women. You can have a girlfriend, be bisexual, and not date men. You can *keep your identity*, decenter men, and date women.
I am not opposed to actual LESBIANS calling themselves LESBIANS but there’s something so… cultish, creepy, and intellectually dishonest about promoting bisexual women to erase their pasts.
Let’s talk about decentering men, and prioritizing women, in a way that is useful for ALL women and not just intellectually dishonest bisexuals.
This is a big hissy fit.
the accusations of intentionally publishing “ragebait” are fascinating to me — we’re a membership-based website, so it’s in our best interest to publish things our readers enjoy reading. i’m an editor here and like the other two editors here, including the editor of this piece, we don’t have traffic goals we have to hit as part of our job. we have no motivation at all to publish “rage bait.” we do publish things that we think will be popular and get traffic to get readers to our site to hopefully click around and get engaged want to join the membership, like lesbian celebrity news. but publishing something to get readers to our site to piss them off would not help us get more members.
this is a personal essay by a really fantastic queer writer talking about her own life and experiences, her own choices and identity. we’ve been publishing personal essays like this for 16 years.
Riese, this is a factually incorrect piece. You cannot manifest being a lesbian. The writer meets the actual definition of bisexuality by her own admission. It was irresponsible to publish this.
We don’t need vague poetic promises of a higher self through being a lesbian. We need women who can “de-center” men without casting off their former identities and integrate their politics & protections within their actual lives.
Riese lies herself. Her whole shtick is saying she is lesbian when she’s been v open about how she was attracted to men in the past, & laughably wrote an essay asking what she should call herself. What more can you expect ? I say this is a proud bisexual who chooses to only date women by preference & is not afraid to claim the label bisexual, nit steal it from lesbians
This is exactly what needs to be said in response to this garbage piece.
What is wrong with people. Seriously. If the article is not your thing, fine. But attacking a website for publishing a personal piece and trashing it because of your limiting idea who can identify as a lesbian is beneath the beltline.
Critiquing a publicly available essay is “below the belt” but publishing this nasty lesbophobia isn’t? OK lol
Congratulations, you are bisexual, not lesbian. It’s both biphobic and lesbophobic to “choose” a lesbian “identity” and still be attracted to men, even if you “center women.” (I’m not even sure what that means.) If lesbians can’t have one word to describe our identity and orientation, then what can we have?
Lesbians aren’t “mean.” We’re are just protective of our very identity in a current cultural upheaval that wants to equate us with queer, sapphic, wlw, etc.
So there is actually nothing wrong with being bisexual and choosing not to date men. The term “sapphic” is right there.
Lesbianism is never a choice. You cannot force your way into a community you are not a part of.
I understand a core part of this essay is you wanting to center queer culture and opt into being a queer person rather than someone who happens to be gay. If you had framed this as a desire to fully engage in queerness as a culture, the message would have actually landed. Ironically, you are furthering yourself from the queer community and actual lesbians with this essay.
There is no rule that you HAVE to date men if you’re bisexual. Refusing a label that is actually you feels icky to me, like you’re implying there is something wrong with being bisexual. Please spend energy addressing your internalized biphobia instead of taking a term that doesn’t belong to you.
Lastly, being a part of a queer community and engaging in queer culture is listening and learning from queer people (especially lesbians in this circumstance!). If you are constantly met with outrage from the community you claim to be a part of and “acceptance” from non-lesbians, you need to listen and reframe your thinking.
Hi, I have been reading the comment section and as a bi I am trying to understand. I think human sexuality is more like spectrum, so for example if a woman is primarily attracted to women but has a little attraction to men but not enough to be enough for example for partnership, would you be mad if she identifies as a lesbian? I am sure so many lesbians fit in this category . That hard line between lesbians and bisexuals won’t be causing a lot of identify lesbians to keep hidden some parts of themselves because of fear of rejection?
It’s pretty wild that you want to try and negate the numbers of actual homosexual people, I promise we do exist. Answer this, why do you think lesbians need to make space for attraction to men? Why is it a problem that one sexuality exists which does not involve men at all?
Mad? No.
There is a big difference between a febfem bisexual who calls herself a lesbian and what the person in this article is doing. One is supporting political lesbianism, which is a political viewpoint that has caused a lot of harm to a lot of lesbians (and bisexual women too!) A lot of political “lesbians” were bi women with internalized biphobia and lesbophobia against themselves and used the trauma they had with men to explain why they only choose to be with women…however, they also had the idea that women do not have sex drives and sex passions that did not fit within a pure and soft context…which is why they went after organizations like the LSM, Lesbian Leather and Lace, Saimos, etc. all of which had lesbians and bi women who expressed their sexuality through kink, hook-up, and lesbian cruising culture.
Political “lesbians” also hated trans people because surprise, surprise thinking you can just choose your sexuality and that it is political also extends to thinking being trans is a choice.
They literally threw trash and rotting food on leather lesbians marching in pride parades. Is this really the ideology we want to bring back?
This missed hard. Lesbians aren’t living some kind of elevated, activist lifestyle by being lesbians. You can be bisexual, it’s ok.
I wish it was more common to identify as a febfem because that’s what’s happening here. You’re a bisexual woman who prefers women and dates only women and NB people. Thats fine and normal. Positioning lesbianism as a choice is just doing a terrible disservice to lesbians and adding onto the culture that already doesn’t view us as real. That cannot imagine a world where a woman doesn’t want a man.
The rhetoric you believed about lesbianism being lonely, puritanical and miserable is classic lesbophobia. It’s misogynistic and homophobic and saying our sexuality is a choice adds to that nonsense.
I’m grateful that she doesn’t identify as a febfem, honestly, because from what I’ve seen, “febfems” are essentially bisexual women who are gender-critical anti-trans.
I once scrolled through some online posts tagged for “febfem,” and it was one of the most depressing experiences of my life. Tons of women proclaiming to despise the rest of the bisexual community because they date “males” and trans people, and are therefore innately anti-feminist; post after post of these women expressing their sadness at not being allowed in lesbian-only gender critical spaces because, as bisexuals, they they “pollute” those spaces with their “anti-feminist” attraction to males; all of them expressing some form of loneliness, shame, and self-hatred, feeling like they don’t belong in bisexual or “lesbian feminist” communities. (And, every now and again, an attempt at making a “febfem flag”, usually being some variety of the bisexual flag with a picture of a uterus on it.)
I would rather the person who wrote this article identified as a lesbian than ever entertain gender-critical nonsense – for the sake of her own mental and emotional wellbeing, if nothing else.
You can literally just say you’re in the 4B movement and sapphic. You’re literally aware of that too.
For actual lesbians, being attracted to only women is not a choice. We often suffer tremendously throughout our lives because of it. It’s not a form of escapism and fantasy for us, as it sounds to be the case with you.
And no, we don’t feel shame for it because it’s not a choice as you seem to imply. Many of us literally just want to live normal lives dating women. Not all of us are trying to make a political statement with our lives (or being “queer”).
Ironically because the queer movement has become so common and dominated LGBTQ+, you as a bisexual calling yourself a lesbian are more heavily embraced for “fighting the patriarchy” and “being radical,” than actual lesbians are who happen to dress conventionally feminine and lead quiet lives. Source? I am one of those lesbians.
You are actively contributing to men who think they can “turn” lesbians, and lesbian erasure. And yes, bi erasure. Take a hard look at yourself.
No I didn’t read through the whole thing. I could only read through half of it before becoming nauseous and don’t really have the stomach to read any more.
Continuing this rant a bit. As a feminine lesbian who dresses conventionally and doesn’t make the way I dress or behave a statement, I am ostracized by a lot of queer people. I literally have heard DJs and read announcements in my area making fun of, looking down on, and excluding feminine women who like women. This obsession with making something that is a natural, fundamental part of people’s lives into a political statement, is a mockery and actively causes actual lesbians harm.
Really disappointed Autostraddle published this one tbh. The author is unable to decenter men despite her repeated claim that that’s what she’s doing, she is endlessly virtue-signaling, and she comes across painfully privileged and out-of-touch. One of her most egregious moves though, is using the tragedy of Jonathan Joss’s death as evidence that lesbian existence is under attack? This point doesn’t even make sense but more importantly, she doesn’t even say his name. Jonathan Joss wasn’t just “an Indigenous man,” he was a groundbreaking Indigenous actor and celebrity celebrated for his complex and humanizing portrayals of Indigenous people on screen who died protecting his trans spouse. She mentions his murder, but not his name, using it as a nonsensical point in her article that has no clear message. You’re claiming lesbian existence is under attack but you can’t even share one example of a lesbian hate crime so you use a gay Indigenous actor’s tragic murder on the first day of Pride Month as a throwaway line to prove you’re tapped into queer issues…but can’t even give him the respect he deserves by saying his name, sharing who he is or how he died? So what are we doing here then?
Okay, so you “chose to be a lesbian” and claim we won’t “catch you spilling ink over men” but you talk about men more than you talk about women in the entirety of the article. You describe *almost* every man in more humanizing detail than the women you claim are changing your worldview, choosing to describe them by their physical appearances alone. You’ve “dated the whole range,” so like…what do you want, a trophy? It’s giving fetishization. Choosing to be a lesbian and not buying from Amazon doesn’t make you inherently radical or someone who is building a better world. Look inward, this really isn’t cute.
Thanks for your story.
Life is complicated, confusing, and identity can be challenging.
The transition from young adulthood to adulthood requires a longer transition time frame these days.
I can understand that someone in their 20’s might still be trying to figure out their identity.
And in the LGBTQIA+ realm, there are many identities, which is lovely. But potentially overwhelming when given too much emphasis or weight.
Looking at the comments informs me that some people who feel confident in their identity may feel insulted or feel attacked by this essay. I’m not convinced being inflammatory is the point of the essay.
I could be wrong, but I’m seeing a person who may be still trying to pin down their identity. Being a 20 something y/o falls under the young adult timeframe where people, in general, are still developing and figuring out who they are.
This process can take longer in certain situations, say having a basket of mental health problems, or living through severe family dysfunction.
Not to say that is this individual’s specific case, but cases like this do exist for some exceeding the young adult time frame.
What is interesting to me is the inclusion of the idea of choice.
What so many people seem to be angry about is the free will philosophy debate nestled into this personal piece.
So many commenters seem outraged that the writer points out that there is free will, power, and agency through choice of an LGBTQIA+ identity.
I don’t think I can disagree with the writer on this.
And this outrage pointed at a 24 y/o, who by today’s norms, hasn’t fully transitioned into adulthood, seems like overkill.
For someone who might be in the process of pinning down her identify, wouldn’t exploring the nuances and differences between identities and continuums they exist on be classified as a choice? The choice to self-knowledge?
The Johari Window suggests that there are often pieces of ourselves that we do not know. We can live life, gain experiences, retrieve more self-knowledge, self-reflect and transform unknown pieces of ourselves into known pieces.
Isn’t this part of the process of gaining self-knowledge and becoming a more self-aware and autonomous person?
Isn’t it recognized and acknowledged that for some people identity is more fixed than it is for others?
Can’t people’s identify be impacted by life events unfolding over time?
I thought it was common knowledge that these identities can be fixed for some, and might change for others?
Maybe I’m off base, but I enjoyed the piece and feel like the community might do well to extend some grace and recognize that one person’s experience of discovering identity probably will look different from another person’s.
Saying ‘my way to be lesbian is the only way because I didn’t have a choice’ doesn’t exactly promote group harmony or cohesion, feels pretty antagonistic, and dances the unfortunate reality of compulsory heterosexuality that is still alive and well.
My silly brain loves categorizing and organizing as much as the next person, but I’m not sure how helpful that is here.
But I do love debate, so feel free to disagree and tell me where I’m wrong. Tell me why.
Thank you for this piece! I understand that the idea that labels aren’t literally inbuilt, and that people make choices about what language they use for themselves, ruffles a lot of feathers – but honestly, people need to be more okay about playing about with labels and identities. If people are getting THIS het up about someone who “should” call themselves bisexual calling themself a lesbian instead, then just wait til they hear about people using “contradictory” pronouns! Or non-binary people!
While I usually just call myself genderqueer and queer nowadays, if people want me to be more specific, a label I go for often is “bi-dyke.” For me, it’s because there are so many ways people have defined both of those terms, and their definitions often overlap for me: after all, if the definition of “lesbian” is “someone who is attracted to “non-men”, or someone who is attracted to “women and non-binary people,” or someone who otherwise experiences their attraction as same/similar-gender, and a “bisexual” is someone who is attracted to “the same and different genders to your own,” or is attracted to “two or more genders”…then don’t those definitions overlap significantly? The only core difference between the labels, ironically enough, boils down to whether you find Men to be attractive or not…but there are non-binary/genderfluid/genderqueer lesbians who are, sometimes/partly/entirely, men, and there are lesbians who used to be attracted to men who no longer are, and there are lesbians in mixed-orientation relationships and marriages. If you’re acknowledging these people as being valid lesbians, then you can’t even go by the “non-men” definition.
So then, as a genderqueer person who’s been through the ringer, trying to quantify my attraction to men , trying to figure out where my trans wife and other trans lovers fit in with all of this, trying to find myself reflected in media and culture (is it bad that the essay “The Queer In Me” by Carol Queen and “Bi: Notes from a Bisexual Revolution” rewrote my brain chemistry?), processing how my neurodivergence and gender all impact my sexuality…I tend to go for queer, yeah, but being more specific, it’s bi-dyke. I feel like I can gather plenty of “evidence” to support a case for me to use a bunch of different labels, so at this point, why not just accept that I’m in a grey area between multiple terms, especially since my gender makes ANY kind of label infinitely more complex?
I think all of this squabbling shows just how much things have regressed from when I was starting to come out in 2012. A lot of people like to CLAIM that they’re cool with genderqueerness and fluidity and sexual liberation, but you press them even a little bit, and they make it very clear that the only queer people they accept are gold-star lesbians (if someone’s a Kinsey 5, can they call themselves a lesbian, or is anything that’s not a 0 or a 6 bisexual by default? what about the Klein Grid?), they don’t think bisexuals are queer at all (been seeing a lot of stuff recently about people being “disappointed” when sapphic celebrities start dating men), and they see non-binary people as men-lite or women-lite (lots of stuff online about how it’s okay to be agender and a lesbian, but if you’re a bigender lesbian then that’s not valid). If someone says that they love when people are non-binary, or have complex identities – but they also think that sexuality labels MUST be rigidly defined and policed, that a person’s sexual history and current partner/s should decide what their “true” sexuality is, that someone using multiple labels for themselves is always bad, and that they alone can decide whether someone isn’t “gay enough” to use certain labels – then no, they don’t love complicated queers at all. They want us to go back to a time when the only two labels you could pick were Straight or Gay, and honestly I’m not here for that.
Ew.
You sound just like my ex who constantly violated my boundaries, including continuing to engage physically when a timer went off (they went to hit snooze to continue to please themself to my discomfort and at my expense).
I should have broken up with them on the spot, before they sexually assaulted me. This encounter, I thought we were going to make out again, and instead they got off by humping me. We broke up not long after that.
K H was a horrible communicator, a constant boundary violator, and never accountable for their actions.
They would constantly excuse their poor behavior citing their ADHD and ocd, but never took accountability when someone, including their partner, got hurt by their lack of discipline and self-awareness.
This individual never apologized to me for their poor behavior.
Ironically K H was grad student studying to become a school DEI, LGBTQIA+ leader.
You’d think someone like that would be better about boundaries, communicating with their partner, and respect in general for the community they were a part of.
Sadly, this was not the case. K H was an incredibly self-absorbed person.
My experience with this individual was so bad, I am going to commit to leaving autostraddle.
I know they check the website and I wouldn’t be surprised if “Misha” is K H.
Goodbye Autostraddle.
I’m not interested in sharing myself, including thoughts, somewhere that someone so selfish, cruel, and inconsiderate frequents.
I’m also aware that KH was a sad attempt by people in my life to force me to “look in the mirror”.
That in itself is a disgusting violation.
It’s also wildly inaccurate.
We have vastly different mental health challenges, and I never blamed any of my mental health problems for conflicts I had with my friends or my partners.
I never made a “victim story” about myself because of my disability like KH constantly did as soon as I confronted them about any boundary crossing. (It didn’t take long to realize it didn’t work. To KH having disability means not having to be accountable).
At that time, I didn’t even have the diagnoses that I do now. It would literally have been impossible to side-step accountability by blaming it on mental illness and disability that I literally have zero awareness of at the time.
KH- on the other hand- was fully aware of their challenges and used them as an excuse for poor conduct, instead of doing the work necessary to avoid the poor conduct.
KH individual never apologized to me for any of the boundary violations- including the sexual assault incident.
Now I see that my ‘friends’ have constantly talked behind my back and made ill-informed guesses about my disabilities, my abilities, and my character.
To my friends- if you have a problem with me, talk to me. Don’t manipulate me and make a sexual assaulter out of someone who didn’t have to become one.
That is fucking gross.
You might as well have just killed me if you hated me so much.
And to KH – yes that was sexual assault.
You did not made any indication or communication that we were going to engage in any new physical
activity we haven’t already participated in together.
Learn to be accountable for your poor communication.
When you live with mental illness you have to do more work.
It sucks, it’s difficult, but it’s how you have to live.
KH-
Playing the victim doesn’t work when you’re the abuser. (Unless you’re surrounded by people who don’t fully understand the situation. Like complaining to followers on social media, for example).
It also doesn’t look good when you’re trying to get jobs working with DEI undergraduates at universities, does it?
Grow up and be better.
If you need to get ahold of me. Don’t bother.
I’m not interested.
I would rather be alone than misunderstood.
The people in my life misunderstood me so much that they thought I was anything like KH.
We are not even remotely similar.
I would literally have rather been murdered than mislead, misunderstood, manipulated, and abused.
Reflecting on these years, the abuse, the lies, the manipulation, the dishonesty, the lack of love and respect, makes me sick.
Please leave me fuck alone.
And next time if you have to bother me, if you have to teach me my lesson for being a “difficult” person, for being too different, too confusing, don’t send a bad parody of me my way so the bad parody can sexually assault me.
Just kill me.
We would all be happier.
What are you talking about? Are you forgetting bisexual women are a thing too just like the author and are just as queer as anyone else?
You’re making a huge factual error when you write “they don’t think bisexuals are queer at all (been seeing a lot of stuff recently about people being “disappointed” when sapphic celebrities start dating men)[…]” and it’s extremely telling of you to do so. When lesbians and bisexual women are extra excited about same-sex relationships (and conversely less excited about straight ones), it’s just because we love dating women and we love seeing love between women. It’s rare, it’s stigmatized, it’s a special thing to us, and it’s hard to find people who understand us and share that experience of being in a gay relationship in the current moment. It doesn’t mean we think anyone is more or less queer. It’s not a judgment of someone’s value or character. It’s just one less thing they have in common with us. We have an awful lot of wonderful friends in wonderful straight relationships that we fully support (people in straight relationships are, after all, the majority by far). You complain about those hoooorrible, puritaaanical lesbians who only “accept” certain types of “queer people,” but I really doubt that gay people en masse are actually “unaccepting” of straight people and bi people in straight relationships in any real way. I think you’re just disappointed that we feel slightly happier about and slightly closer with people in same sex relationships, which is simply not the same thing. And it’s shockingly entitled and solipsistic behavior to respond to lesbian and bisexual enthusiasm for same sex relationships and spin that into an attack on straight relationships.
The divide breaks down like this: some people are very preoccupied with questions like “well who TECHNICALLY is defined as queer” and “who fits THIS label or THAT label” and word games and rhetoric and taxonomy. But some of us are really into loving women, and sex with women, in the real world, no matter what you wanna call it, and no amount of arguing is going to make the latter into the former or vice versa.
The author calling lesbianism “puritanical” but dating men “sexual liberation” tells me all I need to know: despite wearing lesbianism as a costume, her inherent attraction is to men, and she’ll end up with one when it’s no longer cool to be gay.
It’s always this woke version of conversion therapy huh? People on conservative and “liberal” sides bith take such issue with women who actually only love women that they’ll do anything they can to erase us.
The more I read testimonies from lesbians, the more I’m convinced it’s not a genuine sexual orientation, and just a political label. Almost all seem to be dating women out of frustration with men rather than attraction, and go back to heterosexuality when it’s time to settle down.
Never seen a gay man do the same.
And this is exactly why actual lesbians can’t stand pretendbians like this author. Just nonsense and homophobia all the way down, people like this do massive harm to us.
Yeah this kind of thinking totally won’t be used by people with very bad intentions to justify things like conversion therapy.
Being lesbian is the same a being straight. It is not something you choose. It’s something you are. You cannot choose to be gay. You cannot choose to be straight.
This article is insulting to actual lesbians. Our identity is not something anyone gets to try on. It’s who we are
It’s wonderful you’ve decided to stop dating men, you’ll be safer and happier for it. That doesn’t make you a lesbian.
A straight woman can go her whole life without dating a man, she’s still straight. Sexuality isn’t action, it’s not political, it’s not a club you can join, it’s just another part of your human biology, like the color of your eyes or hair.
The fact that homophobes made non-straight sexuality political doesn’t mean it inherently is. You are allowed to talk about own experiences however you want, but you aren’t allowed to redefine words. Lesbian means woman exclusively attracted to other women.