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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
“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.