As the world's foremost expert on lesbian issues
In my latest Globe and Mail column, I wrote about Lesbian Awareness 2.0. There’s a new group, the Lesbian Project, that is not, I contend, actually a secret plot to make things worse for trans people, but is in fact—refreshingly!—simply taking on a different issue.
It seems obvious that cis women into other cis women are a phenomenon, with distinct concerns, as well as members of a marginalized group, whether any particular woman understands this group as lesbians (cis only), lesbians (trans-inclusive), queer, LGBTQ+, or any other term. Let them do their thing! It isn’t stopping anyone else from doing their own.
If I have a personal stake in this, it’s that I believe women who have binary sexual orientations exist, and are too often assumed not to, on account of “fluidity.” But yes, I wrote about this, despite not being a lesbian. No, I did not do a preface in the article about how I am not a lesbian, because there is a fine line between a necessary identity disclaimer so as not to overstep and, well, this.
The fact that the new group is like three people, none of them terribly young, rather drives home the point that while transphobia remains a big issue in society, trans exclusion is being driven by factors other than the existence of members of a demographic who would be drawing up exclusionary terms for entry into a women’s folk music festival. The decision to classify right-wingers (or apolitical transphobes) as a subset of “radical feminists” never did make sense.
I will say that it is interesting that no one is going around asking whether straight women are inclusive. Or rather, if so, it’ll more be an assumption on the part of straight men, that we might consider another woman, for their entertainment. At least that is the cliché. I’m also not convinced there are terribly many people asking this of gay or straight men. So I can see why lesbians feel a bit singled out.
That, and something Kathleen Stock mentioned in the BBC Woman’s Hour interview, but didn’t have space to include: the way “lesbian” has taken on a meaning in porn that does not let’s say resonate with actual women who swing that way. It’s almost as if there is a bigger issue here, and it’s not trans stuff but, what was that old-school expression again? Oh right: patriarchy.