DEAR Drake: STOP FETISHIZING LESBIANS Examining the culture that allows the objectification of women who love women. STORY, DESIGN & ILLUSTRATIONS BY MIA WALSH
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or my college admission essay, I was told to write about something personal. So, I wrote about being gay, growing up gay and what the closet meant to me. That was two years ago in the fall of 2019, but it feels like a lifetime ago for me now as I settle in for my second year of college. I feel I have grown so much — largely because I came out as lesbian. With my newfound pride in my identity, I feel safe to say that Drake’s recent song “Girls Want Girls,” has caused a stir, since on the track he calls himself a lesbian. While many people called out Drake for fetishizing lesbians, I think that the harm he is doing with that song is so much wider. I am angry. I am a lesbian, and I am angry. Drake’s new song on the Certified Lover Boy album puts lesbians at risk and in harm’s way. From my experience, saying I am gay when a man approaches me does not make him turn away; it turns him on. I become a sort of prize that he could sway or “change” to better his chances of me going home with him. When a non-straight woman turns down a straight man and he says, “Oh, I’m a lesbian too,” that creates a dangerous space. When he relentlessly pursues the clearly unwanted interaction and she continues to say no, this is how she and other lesbians get hurt, become hate crime victims and end up dead. In 2019, a photo of a lesbian couple from the United Kingdom went viral, according to Time magazine, because they had been victims of hate-crimes by a group of four teenage boys while on a bus. One of the lesbians who was attacked, Melania Geymonat, blamed herself for kissing her girlfriend and sparking the attack. The criminals were 15, 16 and 17 years old. When I was in the ninth grade, I tried to come out to my mom as lesbian and she looked at me and told me the world would be cruel to me because of it. Unlike Ellen DeGeneres, who was able to build a life and a name for herself while accommodating to the rest of society, my family was scared I would never have that, even as a 13-year-old child.
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backdrop | Spring 2019
