Lesbian. It’s a deeply personal identity that lures an extraordinary level of scrutiny and policing from every nook and cranny. It’s very essence debated en masse and used by conservatives to stoke at the growing flames of ridicule.
“Lesbian” doesn’t even have a universally agreed upon definition. If you look it up online, some definitions will say it’s women who love women, others will say it is non-men who love non-men.
I have always staunchly understood it to be the latter. And, even saying that can be enough to start an argument.
Being a lesbian seems to mean being the subject of an unending audit, with exclusion the goal.
Are you lesbian enough? Gold star? How many cis men have you had sex with? Are you one of those angry lesbians? Are you performative? Are you too fem and therefore appealing to the male gaze? Are you too masc and therefore just trying to be a man?
This is not to disregard how incredibly important accountability, awareness and intersectionality is. Understanding power and privileges, and being inclusive, are a critical part of the identity.
But the scrutiny of the lesbian identity is exhausting. The core of it so at odds with the patriarchy that it’s kicked and prodded every time it tries to thrive within its cage.
Related Content:
- Opinion: When social media repackages harm as lesbian love
- How the carabiner became a symbol of lesbian culture
- Two lesbians found joy in a hopeless place (the men’s bathroom)
A bar and a musician
Over the past few weeks, two completely different lesbian controversies have catapulted across to every corner of the internet.
One concerns a bar in Massachusetts and its decision to make Saturday nights mask-optional. The other concerns musician King Princess and whether having sex with men makes a person less entitled to call themselves lesbian.
At first glance, they have almost nothing in common.
One is about public health, disability inclusion and the survival of a queer venue. The other about a sexual identity.
But my brain naturally hyper fixates on patterns and strings. I relish in looking into their interwoven properties and how this is all connected in one giant web.
The main commonality that I cannot seem to forget being that both have produced the same phenomenon: a viral take down with thousands of people weaponising identity and ideologies.
These events then being used as political ammunition and “evidence” to the conservatives of who we are as a community: people who should not even be allowed to vote or sit on a jury (yes, this has been repeated throughout online spaces).
The Last Ditch Bar
For those who need a quick recap. A lesbian bar in Massachusetts that was mask-mandatory announced on Instagram on August 31 that Saturday nights would become mask optional instead.
Reportedly, the bar for “dykes, transsexuals, gender freaks, workers, and their friends” did so as they were struggling to make ends meet and get enough patrons through.
The local community was at odds, with some supportive and others saying the announcement was flippant and the change unsafe and disrespectful to immunocompromised folk and people with a disability.
Ever since the Boston Globe grabbed onto the local news and pushed it out into the wider world, there’s been an avalanche of mixed reports, opinions, and a lot of bullying.
From accusations of ableism and eugenics, to cult insinuations and mockery. Some have alleged the mask optional nights are less successful and that the local community had banded together to try help the bar already, despite what some think.
Many others have been critical of the response from regular patrons, saying it is “ridiculous” and that it’s only one night a week. “The one night a week is literally to save the bar,” one said.
A lot has happened in this story — too much to cover here — most notably an impossibly large influx of social media posts with everyone and their sister wanting to add their two cents.
There’s even unconfirmed reports that a movie will be made out it…
Somewhere between all the internet sensationalisation, though, a lesbian bar was (big shocker) cast aside and levelled into nothing more than a case study.
The main, most critical question was lost in the circus: how can you keep a lesbian space alive? Or shall I say, how can you keep a lesbian, accessible space alive?
These lesbian spaces are already rare, under-supported and under-funded.
They cannot be sustained through criticism alone to the point it is denounced into oblivion.
They require nuance, organising, fundraising, a village.
Instead, certain people and the social media viral-ness of it all flattened important, complicated conversation into binary this or that camps; and invited the entire world to join in.
This, to me, is just another example of how lesbians, and the people around us, can be exceptional at policing each other but may not always be able to build the village. And how external actors use this against us.
View this post on Instagram
King Princess
Now onto controversy two. Comments from a 2024 podcast episode of Celebrity Book Club with Steven & Lily recently resurfaced on social media, with the musician saying “I’ve taken a lot of dick”.
“Sometimes you get bored, and you’re just like, ‘I’m just gonna ride a cock… People get really shook when I say that… I’m not bi, but why would I exclude myself?”
The backlash on social media took off, naturally, with debates on what counts as lesbianism the central focus.
King Princess has reportedly since replied to one of the many comments (across multiple posts and platforms) calling her “bi” saying: “I am a lesbian. The amount that I actually care about men romantically or sexually is so small, like, it would be inappropriate to call myself bisexual. I am a lesbian, I’ve been a lesbian, I will continue to be a lesbian, because it doesn’t change.”
I’ve seen the video embedded in an article by Them, but it is no longer visible on King Princess’ TikTok.
Now, to be clear: I don’t personally understand lesbian to mean someone who is sexually attracted to cis men. I choose to use the label of lesbian because I am a non-man attracted to non-men.
Before coming out as a lesbian, when I was dating both cis-men and non-cis-men, I used the label bisexual.
I’m not going to pretend otherwise just to make a well-packaged argument about inclusivity.
But there is a difference between having an understanding of what a word means, and believing you have the full authority and understanding to determine someone else’s identity.
That doesn’t mean we can’t have discourse, of course. And it doesn’t mean I didn’t feel off when I first saw King Princess’ interview. I was pretty taken aback. In my opinion, her wording, in particular, was irresponsible given her position.
But we don’t know the full depth of how King Princess feels.
They identify with being a lesbian, they’ve also had sex with men. We don’t know if she still does, if she really is attracted to men (reminder you don’t need to be attracted to someone to have sex with them), or their feelings about men at all… and its none of our business.
Some people believe sex with men and lesbianism are fundamentally incompatible, while some don’t.
This tension is layered and it’s understandable. Being a lesbian comes with a complicated history. Things like compulsory heterosexuality, erasure, objectification, lesbophobia, and the way people understand their own personal sexuality.
There are also issues with how society treats lesbianism as a form of limbo. As if being a lesbian is only a thing until the right man comes along.
Lesbians therefore often hold onto the identity tightly and defend it with their hearts and souls.
Given all I’ve mentioned even before this, this need to protect makes sense.
I feel it too, as a lesbian. I love my identity and feel strongly connected to it.
But — and this is a big but — does that give us a right to decide whether someone in our community has earned the right to use a term?
To define rigid standards people need to meet to be deemed a lesbian?
To use one or two conversations as an excuse to mass-label someone who identifies as a lesbian as bi (using the term as a slur)?
“If you have had sex with XYZ men but spent XYZ with non-men, you are still not a lesbian. If you feel this way about men, but you know it is comp-het you are a lesbian but only XYZ. If you have XYZ”… you get where I’m going with this.
This is where I see the problem emerging. If we do this, where is the line?
It seems like a slippery slope to me.
Again, reiterating, the discourse around identity is important. But that’s not what’s been happening.
It’s been infiltrated by transphobics and puritans making blanket statements on what it is to be lesbian.
View this post on Instagram
The lesbian siege
The King Princess and the Last Ditch conversations are different and there is valid concerns and discussions needed.
But, they both are also exactly what I mean when I say the word lesbian comes with an extraordinary level of policing individuals.
Discourse seems to usually turn into trolling, bullying and identity stripping.
These are just two very recent examples, but they barely scape the surface of the internal division.
You have the TERFs, where trans women are excluded from some lesbian spaces, or the puritans, who use sex, language, politics and identity all as grounds for deciding who is a “good” lesbian and who isn’t.
And then there’s the rest, trying to navigate this hetero-centred world without constantly feeling like we’re failing the invisible lesbian test.
We don’t just argue about what the word lesbian means. We investigate the people using it. We examine their sexual histories and genders. We scrutinise their partners. We expect moral perfection at all times. We demand consistency from identities that, in real life, people can arrive at through years of confusion, experimentation and self-discovery.
Sometimes there’s accountability, but often times online its pile-ons and empty trolling.
And then our internal disagreements are taken out of context, warped and waved around by those wanting to destroy us as evidence that lesbians, and queer non-men more broadly, are too angry, hysterical, or obsessed with identity to be taken seriously.
I’m not solely blaming us, just to be clear. And I don’t think the answer is to stop arguing; this is not a case for making everyone perfectly agreeable.
I hate the “left eating the left” critique that’s an obvious ploy used by people in positions of privilege to shut people up and keep the status quo.
But what the fuck is what we’re currently doing? It sure as hell is not disagreement, holding people accountable, or having complicated conversations. It’s not growth, community, or building the infrastructure for our ongoing well-being.
It is an unstoppable, unrelenting besiegement. And I think it’s time we start finding a better way to talk to each other.
For the latest LGBTIQA+ Sister Girl and Brother Boy news, entertainment, and community stories in Australia, visit qnews.com.au. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
