COVER STORY
IT’S TIME TO GIVE LESBIANS THE CREDIT THEY DESERVE April 26 is Lesbian Visibility Day By Courtney Hardwick
Over the past century, the world has been changing – and we owe that change to members of the LGBTQ+ community who have been willing to face widespread systemic and internalized homophobia to fight for hundreds of historical firsts every single year, including the legalization of same-sex marriage. Since the beginning, lesbians have been a huge part of that fight and the progress that has been made. No matter how many more letters are added to the acronym, the L will always be one of the first – and Lesbian Visibility Day was founded on April 26, 2008, to celebrate that. While lesbians are a major part of the LGBTQ+ community as a whole, they also have their own unique struggles and triumphs that deserve to be recognized. This Lesbian Visibility Day, let’s celebrate lesbians in all their forms and take a look back at their important role in history. The connection between feminists and lesbians The modern definition of feminism as a movement that fights for women’s empowerment and equality isn’t exactly how it has always been. In the late 1960s, second-wave radical feminists who called themselves “political lesbians” were more about rejecting men completely. They argued that women should abandon heterosexuality by choice as a way to separate themselves from the sexist patriarchy. This is just one example of the view that sexuality is a choice, which is something the LGBTQ+ community has been fighting against since…well, forever.
MARCH / APRIL 2020
Lesbian feminism, which was most popular from the ’70s to the mid ’80s, went on to suggest that lesbianism was the logical result of feminism. If you were a feminist, then you must hate men and therefore must be a lesbian. These lingering negative connections between feminism and lesbianism are part of the reason some people seem so reluctant to call themselves feminists – and lesbians – today. Thankfully, modern feminism, or fourth-wave feminism, is much more diverse, with intersectionality being one of the main focuses of the movement. Feminism today is designed to be for everyone from the cisgender lesbian to the non-binary pansexual. But there are still pockets of feminists who aren’t as accepting as they could be. As recently as 2008, the term TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist) was coined. A TERF believes trans women are not women and trans men are just trying to gain coveted male privilege. When TERF is used as an insult, it is usually referring to an old-fashioned lesbian who has hostile views on men and transgender people. That connection
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between the hostile feminist and lesbians may not be accurate in practice most of the time, but it’s an association many young people navigating their sexuality are acutely aware of. With so many stereotypes still lingering between lesbians and radical feminism, younger generations are trying to distance themselves from the word lesbian and move towards a more inclusive and flexible view on sexuality. The queer revolution Representing one of the founding letters of the ubiquitous, everevolving acronym, lesbians have been a constant in the ongoing fight for equality, representation and visibility in the LGBTQ+ community. Along with gay, bisexual and transgender, the word lesbian has a clear definition that elicits a wide range of responses. A lesbian is simply a woman who is attracted to other women – but as the world moves beyond binary labels and towards a more fluid understanding of what sexuality is, fewer and fewer people are choosing to identify as lesbian. The shift can be seen most clearly when comparing across generations. A 2018 study by Ipsos Mori found that young people are more likely to have a “less binary view of sexuality,” which suggests that younger generations do not feel as strong a pressure to use the label “gay” or “straight” and are more comfortable with viewing sexuality as a sliding scale. While this is true for people of all gender identities, the percentage of people who identify as lesbians seems to be dropping the most drastically. Another 2018 survey, this time conducted by Whitman Insight Strategies and BuzzFeed News, found that out of 880 LGBTQ Americans, 46 per cent identified as bisexual while only 16 per cent identified as lesbian. It also found that the majority of selfidentified lesbians (69%) are aged 40 and older. The word lesbian doesn’t seem to resonate with younger generations as much as it used to. But why? Younger generations are skewing more towards the non-binary, with the number of people who identify as ‘queer’ growing steadily. Lesbian is seen as more old-fashioned, and many young people are no longer willing to choose a label they feel limits them. Queer is seen as much more fluid, leaving room for figuring things out along the way. The word lesbian is something they associate with older generations who fought for equality in far different ways than they do. Today, being a proud lesbian doesn’t feel like the rebellion it once did – it just feels outdated.
