If you choose to be a lesbian, are you a lesbian or a bi-sexual woman? - guest post on Julie Bindel substack

[IwantToRetire]

The joy of choosing to become a lesbian
A guest post, by lesbian, feminist, author and publisher, Renate Klei
https://juliebindel.substack.com/p/the-joy-of-choosing-to-become-a-lesbian

This has made quite a few women, quite cross!

I imagine people do get their knickers in a twist.

I think a lot of people now have been taught a very reductive concept of human sexuality. Just this: it's innate, unchangeable, and you are either attracted to one sex, or both, and those three permutations are described using certain words.

That's been the main narrative since I guess the 80s. It wasn't the only or even dominant narrative before that, including among many gay and lesbian people. It's also notable that it's not a scientific perspective, it's closer to an ideological assertion. It seems to describe some people's experiences, but not others.

From a sort of anthropological perspective we can see that culture strongly influences how people experience and conceptualize their sexuality, and what they do about that.

I would also say that for many adults, they can see changes in their sexual attraction over time, even up into old age. Smaller usually as they get older but not always. The idea that we are totally fixed doesn't seem realistic.

Given all this, I think it's reasonable to say words like lesbian can be mainly about what a person does, rather than some internal set of feelings - though obviously these things will often be related. If JB never has relationships with men, even if she is theoretically capable of sexual attraction to one, is there much point in calling herself bi-sexual?

And I think that approach has historical precedent too.

This isn't about JB!

Did you read the article?

I'm baffled as to what happened to the husband? Did he just disappear into thin air?
Of course she didn't 'choose' to be a lesbian, you don't choose who you're attracted to. She met a woman she was attracted to and realised she was bisexual.

A lot of lesbians really don’t like political/choice lesbians. There’s an element of appropriation that doesn’t sit well, and in the 80s/90s there was a certain type of political lesbian who seemed to delight in telling other lesbians they were doing it wrong - to the extent of picketing the few lesbian clubs that were safe spaces for the ‘wrong’ type of lesbian.

JB, if you have read her over the years, is also a political lesbian.

So you didn't read the article.

Of course it is twaddle.

But almost more baffling is that not only the author but the "publisher", as feminists, didn't write about a different but maybe more difficult choice for most women.

ie if you are a woman who is a feminist, can you be in a relationship with a man?

The article is about a woman who, apparently rather slowly, realised that her husband and his career would always take precedence over hers!

For many women reaching this understanding can mean realising they would have a celibate future (in fact celibacy as a political choice used to be talked about).

I consider myself a life-long lesbian (all the signs were there) but due to a religious upbringing and marriage to a man at a young age as a result, I wasn't able to express my sexuality even to myself, let alone live authentically. It wasn't until I stumbled across the concept of "choosing" to be lesbian that I was able to mentally open that door and look inside. I don't consider myself a political lesbian, but I have chosen to live openly as a lesbian since then. That part has been a choice. Being attracted to women was always there, even when I didn't acknowledge it to myself. I'm not bisexual, either.

picketing the few lesbian clubs that were safe spaces for the ‘wrong’ type of lesbian

I haven't heard about that. Cant believe anyone would presume to do that?

Or is it just another strand of what we have now about the wrong type of feminist, and you have to publicly denounce them?!

I think there are many, many women who have lived this experience.

But being able to liberate yourself from that compulsory heterosexuality, is exactly that. Liberating. Not a "choice".

So glad to hear you are now your true self.

I'm seriously considering it.
Any offers?😎

JB herself was heavily involved. At one point there were earnest motions in various feminist organisations to ‘ban’ lesbians from wearing leather jackets. Total navel-gazing. Interestingly one of the accusations used to try and shut down dissenting lesbians was that they were anti-Semitic. Plus ça change. I had friends on the scene when I was a student and it got very unpleasant.

I think it was more about S&M gear than just leather jackets, which were pretty common lesbian attire!
S&M wasn't welcome for a number of reasons, including its use of Nazi and slave symbolism - I remember seeing a gay man turning up at an event in full SS uniform, and a woman leading another woman who had a collar and chain on her neck, and there was a lot of pressure on feminists to see that as completely acceptable .. actually now I think of it, it was rather like the way GC feminists are decried these days for not accepting trans symbolism.

On the subject of 'choosing' to be lesbian - I've always thought it shouldn't be a choice, like 'shall I have tea or coffee?' kind of choice, but I know lots of lesbians who started out having heterosexual relationships just because that's the path that was set out for them. When the alternative appeared, in the form of a desirable woman [possibly wearing a leather jacket] they embraced the alternative with... gay abandon😄. So an evolution rather than a choice.

Why's it made people cross? Seems a lovely story of self discovery.

I agree. I read it and thought she sounded brave. She discovered she was attracted to women it's not like she had to force it!

I was straight for 45 years and have been bisexual for 4. Did my sexuality change? Did my increasing disillusionment with men overcome my internalised homophobia and the behaviours ingrained by heteronormative society? I don't know.

I do know I was not unhappy to discover this about myself. That I'd thought in the past it would be cool to be bisexual. Why not enjoy the best of both worlds? Perhaps that was the suppressed bisexuality speaking. Perhaps at some point I will decide I no longer fancy women. Or I no longer fancy men.

Well she, Renate, is a product of her generation. She’s talking about discovering she was a lesbian as a young married woman in the early 1980s. The homophobia and repression she grew up with in the 1960s and as a young wife in the 1970s would have been suffocating.

She may frame it as a choice, and that imho that view is probably is a vestigial thought from the idea of “choosing to come out of the closet”- people don’t often talk about the phases of slow realisation, the years of suppression and denial by squashing homosexual thoughts as “fantasies” or “wishful thinking” and then the courage gathering to decide to, and then step out of of the closet and choose to live authentically as the lesbian you are, and always have been.

I see it as nature triumphing over half a lifetime of heteronormative misdirected nurturing.

It reminds me of an orphaned puppy I had that was raised by my cat. This puppy thought he was a cat. He played like a cat. He hunted like a cat. He flicked his tail in ? when excited and a ! when annoyed (never wagged it). Then one day when he was a full grown dog, he suddenly realised he was not a cat, but a dog. He started acting all doggy.

You raise a child to adulthood thinking that the only sexuality possible is heterosexual, then they are going to realise they are homosexual later in life, and bisexuals even later in life.

I did read the article, why would you think not.

The author, like JB, is a political lesbian and is arguing that's a valid category. As JB herself has done many times over the years.

I don't have much time for JB, but the idea that lesbian (or gay) has only ever been understood as an innate unchangeable sexual orientation is not accurate. Even up to the early 80s other theories existed and many gay and lesbian people saw their sexuality as a choice they made. They used those words to describe an action, rather than a totally fixed inner orientation that had meaning even apart from actually having sex at all.

That's not that strange in that many things were more often conceptualized within that kind of framework - things one did, rather than inner tendency toward wanting to do them or not, was a more dominant way of thinking about people.

Why leather jackets?

Edit: Ah, I see this was answers. I was thinking maybe something to do with vegetarians.

I don't think this is terribly uncommon. I was attracted to women when I was younger, I'm not now, what changed? Maybe hormones, I suppose, as it also was accompanied by a stronger attraction to men as well. Or maybe just being married a long time so not having much to do with women in that way?

I also think there are people who are really not bisexual so much as sex hobbiest, and their sex life consists of trying to find new thrills and experiences, be it toys or situations or roll play or whatever. They essentially treat sexual partners as a means to an end, a sort of masterbutory tool. What's their sexuality - it's almost not a relevant question. But I think it suggests some capacity to expand what we find interesting wrt sex.

I've seen some interesting stories of men having significant changes in their sexual orientation as well. One was a man in his late 20s, gay, he'd always seen himself as gay and had run away from home and worked as a prostitute in his teens. In his 20s after a bad relationship, he decided to be celibate for a period, and after a number of months (6 or 8 I think) he found himself being attracted to women as well as men - something which hadn't been the case before.

There isn't much definitive research about how sexuality works or what causes it or whether it is immutable or innate, so I am always surprised at the degree to which people insist it must be all of these things.

Excellent post. I've always been creeped out by the term "political lesbianism" and the idea that one can just choose to be lesbian, as if it comes from a whim. It has always sounded to me unpleasantly like it's something women should do to stick it to men, regardless of whether they feel any sexual desire for other women at all. It makes far more sense to speak of slowly realising one's orientation, and the process you described, than talking as if the desire itself is a choice.

@LaerealSilverhand

I am amazed!

Well would have been at the time had I heard. Now I am not surprised.

The arrogance.

Even if you as a (choice) lesbian thought that butch and femme culture was not something you wanted to be part of, how could that translate into actively picketing.

Its always the same stop others doing what you disapprove of, but never do anything pro-active and supportive, ie start your own no stereotype disco or whatever.

Why's it made people cross? Seems a lovely story of self discovery.

As I said up thread, if she had written about how for some reason she hadn't quite clicked that women are second class citizen and then decied enough with men, and then (NB only for one particular woman) thought you would try same sex, it would have been more logical.

ie she is bisexual and based on a late understanding of feminism decided to be a sexual separatisit, that would be a political choice based on her oppression as a heterosexual woman.

Women who are lesbians, do not in any way have any sexual interest in men.

And if you had read the post up thread from the woman who because of family and culture had been trapped in heterosexuality, but manged to free herself, is totally not about choice.

Its just farcical to say someone who has a privileged enough life to make choice, has no relationship whatsoever to women who are lesbian.

I dont think anyone who has said they are a lesbian has every said "it was a choice". See upthread.

Honestly, it so insutling to women who as lesbians cannot, even at threat of violence or worse, think I might opt into lesbianism I might not, I'll see if the "right" woman comes along, to women who are only sexually attracted to women.

I am trying so hard to remove the words “what a crock of old shite” from my post but my deeply developed linguistic knowledge prevents me. Jesuit Julie. Just Jesus.

IF ONLY BEUNG STRAIGHT WAS A FUCKING CHOICE.

I don't think JB is a "political lesbian" either. She has always argued that it is a valid choice to make and that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with choosing lesbianism.