Can we be honest about homophobia?

[thatdamnwoman]

I'm a lesbian and I know lots of lesbians and socialise with lesbians. I think for a while, post-civil partnerships, I and many of the dykes I know thought we'd made it. Yes, we still had to regularly correct people whose default mode is heterosexual and married, yes we were aware of the slight pause or the embarrassed or frozen expression that flitted briefly across peoples' faces when we outed ourselves, but on the whole things felt better. Out in the street if lads in a car wound down the window to yell 'Lesbians' at me and my partner or friends, we'd cheerily say 'Yes, lesbians.'

Then last year at a public meeting where transgender issues were on the agenda a Labour stalwart, a woman I've vaguely known for years got up, in a hall packed with people from the left, people who call themselves progressive, and said something along the lines of 'I've never had much time for lesbians, but on this issue I feel for them.' And people clapped. Would they have clapped if she'd said Muslim/ black/ disabled/ blue-eyed/ tall women?

It felt like a kick in the teeth because as I know from experience, any women's service, women's charity or women's pressure group will have at its heart a lesbian or two. The two women's centres where I was a volunteer (both gone now) were founded and run by lesbians.

There's been a thread on MN in which at least one woman has bemoaned not being able to be a lesbian because she's not sexually drawn to women. There's such a thing as a political lesbian: a woman who decides to commit herself to women's causes and chooses to socialise with women and lesbians, often ending up in a companionate relationship with another woman, or more than one other woman. There are even a couple of small separatist groups that I'm aware of: groups of women who live together or close by each other and who try as far as possible to avoid contact with men.

I'd be interested in hearing honest thoughts about this. About why some apparently progressive and liberal women still have that slight intake of breath when it becomes clear that I'm the straight woman they thought I was. What is it that goes through your head? Be honest.

Sorry, that last line should have read 'not' the straight woman they thought I was.' Doh. Off to the analyst?

That was a brilliant Freudian slip!
Sorry that you had to hear that kick in the teeth from someone who you might have counted upon. And I can bet that she thought she was being terribly kind and supportive...

I’m not a lesbian, but my mother is bisexual and I was brought up by her and her girlfriend for my formative years.
I think a lot of the gay liberation movement was actually a men’s movement, gay men are seen as fun and sassy and all the best bits of women but without being actually an ewww woman.
Lesbians have never really had this status.

I got reeeeally annoyed at the film Pride for only having one token lesbian then when they got other lesbians they were awful boring handbrakes that they made fun of all the way through. And I was shouting at the scream when they wanted to set up a women’s group and everyone was like ‘stupid lesbians wanting to set up a women’s group we’ll sort out the women when the main fights done, what issues do women have that they can’t say in front of men anyway?’

It’s never been ‘cool’ to be a lesbian.

“About why some apparently progressive and liberal women still have that slight intake of breath when it becomes clear that I'm the straight woman they thought I was. What is it that goes through your head?“

Ah shit, hope they’re not annoyed I just assumed they were straight...should I apologise? Or does that sound like I’m sorry they’re a lesbian? Damn, now this pause is too long...

Stuff like that tbh.

I don't really think anything when I realise someone is a lesbian. When I was younger I was curious about someone being 'different' but it no longer seems noteworthy.

I couldn't be a political lesbian, I do like to talk to and socialize with both men and women. I would feel I'd cut off a half of life experience not to. This may be coloured by not having a brother, father or husband any more, so my life is female centric enough already

I think a lot of people are prejudiced against lesbians because our society is still male dominated and the thought of a woman not needing a man at all bothers people. Men do not like to be superfluous and a lot of women have internalised misogyny

"About why some apparently progressive and liberal women still have that slight intake of breath....."

I'm very glad to hear that dykes are going back to grassroots social networks, and that political lesbians and separatist groupings still out there! When the 'official' public spaces we gained for a while (women's centres and groups, lesbian and gay bars etc) become unfriendly for various reasons, we just have to go back to what always worked.

Lesbians were always going to be more challenging because what is the key thing about lesbians...........that we don't need/want males sexually/romantically/emotionally. Frankly, I have never bothered with males socially, apart from relatives and a few okay gay men. Straight men, apart from semi-social occasions via work, why would I bother? They are irrelevant and of no interest to me.

Maybe it's the irrelevant that more often than not provokes the 'man-hating lesbian' responses. I've better things to do do with my limited free time than waste it talking to straight blokes!

About the intake of breath. I don't know what it means because it could be different for different people, but I remember when I was younger I used to be a bit like the dad with the gay son in The Fast Show - feeling a bit awkard and not knowing how to handle it. I think I had a load of questions I would have loved to ask, but at the same time wanted to act casual and not too intreagued. I did know lesbians, but they were mainly my mum's friends who suddenly fell in love with women when they were menopausal.

I think I still might have an intake of breath if someone I thought was straight was a lesbian or thought was a lesbian was straight - but that would just be the sound of me recalibrating my assumptions rather than being judgemental or feeling awkward.

No, Tabularhasa, I'm pretty sure I don't assume that any particular person is gay or straight — but then after that spectacular Freudian slip I'm not sure I can be sure of anything. In the particular case I cited I know the woman lives with, and has a family with, a man and until she informs me otherwise I will have to work on the assumption that she's straight — which is congruent with what she said.

I suspect that there was a point in the noughties with things like Sugar Rush and Lip Service and The L Word and kdlang and Cindy Crawford on the front cover Vanity Fair when perhaps the media decided that a certain kind of lesbian/ lesbianism was cool. But I'm not sure that society really accepted it or that it became nothing to make a fuss about.

I see the race to transition non-conforming girls into boys as a way in which suppressed homophobia is leaking out. And I think the way that the police and Liverpool Council and so many other bodies have leapt to the defence of poor transwomen is also demonstrative of underlying homophobia.

Is if that lesbian= feminist in many peoples' minds? Many lesbians I meet don't seem to be at all political, let alone feminist.

I think lesbians aren't very well represented in society in things like the media. We have camp gay characters on tv, and gay men who pass as straight. To be a gay male has become 'normal' (sorry, horrible word) , in terms of being something we understand and are used to seeing represented in different arenas. When was the last time I saw a butch lesbian in a drama on television, say? Never, I don't think beyond Nanette. Butch women in particular probably still feel alien to most of society on one level even if people don't want to admit that. People fear what they don't understand.

I care very much that lesbians are being coerced by men to sleep with them or are being told that their sexuality is a preference or that they are simply attracted to a feminine essence which can reside in a male body. I would like us as a society to have a greater understanding and representation of female homosexuals so that no one makes any shitty homophobic comments any more. We clearly need to do more work on that

I knew and worked with a number of lesbians when I was younger (social services/third sector).

I'll be honest in that some of them annoyed me a bit with their politics/world view that lacked any centering of males and blathered a lot about gender inequality.

I realise now that was because I was very young, heterosexual and still in a naive bubble where I thought equality was won, I could have it all and was generally invincible.

I've since come down to earth with a massive bump and would quite like to meet those women again because they were spot on. I just didn't want my bubble bursting at the time.

I think lesbians are often at the forefront of pointing out inconvenient truths and get a lot of pushback for that.

Many apologies

"Straight men, apart from semi-social occasions via work, why would I bother? They are irrelevant and of no interest to me. Maybe it's the irrelevant that more often than not provokes the 'man-hating lesbian' responses. "

I have found that the thing I do that provokes men to rage more than anything else is ignore them. I have had men nearly hit me in public, or go on tirades about how stuck up I was, or racist, or a B*tch, or all sorts of things, simply for not responding to them. Sometimes I am intentionally ignoring them, sometimes it is because of mild hearing loss. Doesn't matter, makes them just as angry.

I finally realized the power to ignore someone is real power and that's why it makes them so angry. If you are required to jump and ask how high whenever someone speaks, they have power over you. If you are free to ignore them, you are free. So when women ignore strange men speaking to them, or ignore men altogether, they are demonstrating their freedom from men and this terrifies and angers them. They feel themselves irrelevant and their push to force women back into a state of slavery where they NEED men and are dependent intensifies.

To use the much misrepresented 'intersectionality' term, I think much of this is down to the intersection of homophobia with misogyny, which is why lesbians are not only bearing the brunt of trans ideology but also why so many people just don't see it.

when women ignore strange men speaking to them, or ignore men altogether, they are demonstrating their freedom from men

This is what I find so inspiring about (feminist) lesbians - they simply don't give a shit what men think of them. It always seems so audacious and liberating.

Personally I think there's a sort of pincer movement that lesbians have to contend with. On the one hand, there's the 'lesbians existing for the pleasure and titilation of others' which seems to me to be rooted in basic misogyny.

And on the other, there's the second class status of women in the LGB movement itself. Two examples will suffice to explain what I mean. Will and Grace, often wickedly funny and groundbreaking for involving gay male characters as main parts etc. Lesbians only included as a running gag, usually to rip the shit out of them. I couldn't watch it because it annoyed me so much.

And a personal example - young me, little baby butch in a gay nightclub in the middle of England way back in the 1990's, loved dancing. I was told by more than one gay male to move out of the way and go and sit with the other dykes. It was like being at school and the boys commandeering the playground for football while the girls had to sit round the edges. That and the fact that gay clubs were legion in the gay quarter, but there was one just one measly lesbian pub, and I'll get that's been colonized now too.

If I do a sharp intake of breath when I discover someone I meet is a lesbian, I can promise you it's an expression of internal joy and trying to hold back an impulse to hug you in relief at meeting a woman who isn't afraid to acknowledge they are oriented towards women.

OvaHere, thanks for the flowers but no need.

I can see how lesbians can be seen to be annoying because they ask questions that undermine a lot of what most people take for granted. Inconvenient opinions/ ways of seeing things — rarely welcomed with open arms.

As to the intake of breath, for me that is usually a worry that I have offended by assuming someone is straight, and then wanting to say the right thing, as in not make a deal of it, and then the moment has muddled past.
For me it is not a negative (or intended to be) but rather about my own clumsy social skills.

I've better things to do do with my limited free time than waste it talking to straight blokes!

I find that an intersting comment. As a straight women, shoudl I say I have better things ot do with my time that talk to gay women? That doenst make sense!
I hear what other pps have said about men's reaction to being ignored (made me laugh, that is great, the ultimat eput down - you are irrlevant!)
But generally, socially, I intend to mix with eveyrone, men and women, every race, religious background, gay and straight, so I find myself perplexed by the idea that we should cut out 50% of the population, and I do get a bit tired of the politicalness of that.

My dd has recenty come out as gay (aged 13). She is very much th ebutch edn of the spectrum, and through her eyes I am becoming more and more aware of how society doesn't like that, Gay men are cool (eveyrone's best friend) they are mainstream on media etc. But butch gay women aren't seen as cool. I am finding that I love Sandy Tosvig and Sue Perkins more than ever, as they are the only vaguely possibly role model for dd in the media.

“No, Tabularhasa, I'm pretty sure I don't assume that any particular person is gay or straight“

I do though, that wee stream of social awkwardness was pretty much what I’d be thinking if there was a pause or intake of breath if I suddenly realised or someone had to tell me they weren’t straight.

If I’m meeting people I don’t know or don’t know well their sexuality really isn’t of any relevance to me, so I’m not thinking about it at all - so I would assume they’re straight.... but not consciously, just it’s my default...

But I’m also aware it must be rubbish to constantly have to deal with that assumption and I’d feel a bit awkward that I might have made them feel self conscious, so... that’s what I’d be thinking.

Jeez what a thing to say! Not had much time for lesbians?? Ffs.

I’ve always found it interesting how lesbian is used as an insulting term by men. I remember saying no to men as a student (short hair, very gender non conforming but straight) and being told I was ‘a fucking lezza’ like it was an insult. Which confused me until I realised that it’s a rejection of the male ego and that’s hugely damaging to them. Lesbian to me was value neutral, it’s just another way of being, but lesbian to those men was a threat to their virility.

I also think gay men are so much more visible - i hadn’t really thought about it until recently but there aren’t the same number of public figures who are lesbian as gay, are there?

I’ll probably put this clumsily but our society idolises that sort of person who is extrovert and showbiz-y. There’s a definite subset of gay men who inhabit that role and perhaps not the same trend with women. So perhaps there has always been a visibility issue.

But what I think has changed recently is an acceptability issue. Gay men seem to be lauded in the media and lesbians seem to be under fire. It’s extremely disturbing to me.

As to your second question - I don’t think anything would go through my head in terms of judgement. The lesbians I know are universally decent women raising families, or not, and the one with kids have the same issues I do (sleep deprivation, etc.) in many ways I feel more able to speak to them about these issues because they are women.

I feel solidarity with lesbians in a way I probably didn’t so much before. Not that I was negative before, just it wasn’t something I thought about much. But now i see that lesbians are the canary in the coal mine for many issues affecting women in general. Specifically the issues around TR activism but also as a kind of distilled target of many of the misogynistic hatreds of women in general.

In a nutshell, lesbians are women who reject men sexually. And an awful lot of men think that’s unacceptable. In that sense, the way lesbians are treated is a microcosm of the way women are.

Sorry, long rambly post.

It also makes me feel solidarity because I think even since I was a teen society is restricting the ‘ways you can be a woman.’ Now there’s so much more pressure to look and act a certain way. I never confirmed to that, and I guess lesbians don’t either, because part of that ‘how to be a woman’ is to be up for no boundaries sex at all times with men. Fuck that.

About why some apparently progressive and liberal women still have that slight intake of breath when it becomes clear that I'm the straight woman they thought I was. What is it that goes through your head?

Usually embarrassment that I assumed they were straight to be honest, wondering how much you're judging me for it, and what to say, should I apologise, etc. I don't have any particular opinion on lesbians at all.
I'll admit that I struggle with trying not to assume that people are straight. I think the most recent figures are that 2.5% of people are LGB? So 97.5% aren't. So it's quite hard to get out of "default mode" when in almost every case the default is correct.

Frankly, I have never bothered with males socially, apart from relatives and a few okay gay men. Straight men, apart from semi-social occasions via work, why would I bother? They are irrelevant and of no interest to me.
I'm quite shocked at reading this though. Obviously it's entirely your prerogative to socialise with, or not with, whoever you like. But ask yourself how you would feel reading that about any other group of people? E.g. "I've never bothered with black/Muslim/poor people, they are irrelevant and of no interest".
In fact I think you probably know how you feel about it, from this sentence:
a woman I've vaguely known for years got up, in a hall packed with people from the left, people who call themselves progressive, and said something along the lines of 'I've never had much time for lesbians,
How exactly is that different to you saying men are irrelevant to you?
If you think straight men are irrelevant to you, why should straight men care about lesbian women and issues of homophobia?
I don't know if attitudes like that are widespread - I haven't come across them in the lesbian women I know, but admittedly that's only a few people. If they are widespread, maybe that (the somewhat isolationist desire) contributes to the lack of acceptance? Perhaps in contrast with gay men, who often seem to seek out the company of women (straight or otherwise), the stereotypical "gay best friend" of women, etc. There seems to be a certain "anti-man" attitude amongst some (and I absolutely don't want to generalise to all here) lesbians, whereas I've never come across an anti-woman sentiment among gay men.

I'm a lesbian, but until recently if another woman mentioned a female partner I'd freeze and think to myself 'don't look homophobic, act natural!', which is clearly idiotic. Luckily I've stopped doing that, I think because I now have a strong lesbian friendship group so it's normalised?

When people do the pause to me I often wonder if they're thinking the same thing.

As much as homophobia has come back with gender politics, I like that lesbians have been strongly acknowledged in the conversation, we've probably never been so defended! I suspect some of it is a little cynical but it's still a positive overall, imo.

I also think gay men are so much more visible - i hadn’t really thought about it until recently but there aren’t the same number of public figures who are lesbian as gay, are there?

I also think this is a good point - and probably at least partly of the sex divide in people in public positions. I don't know if lesbian women are disproportionately underrepresented compared to women as a whole?

I've got an ad for Gay Cruises on my browser...

We became adoptive parents, and hence got to know a lot of gay and lesbian parents (at least online) in 2012, and I finally grasped why civil partnerships were not enough. I've learned not to assume parents are straight since then but I bet I was doing it before that.