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.