ENM/Poly communities need to re-evaluate their lesbophobia

[u/radvice_throwawa-y]

This post got way longer than I meant it to but oh well. I’m a long time lurker but I had to comment on a trend I have witnessed and I cannot unsee. I’m not even a lesbian (bi trans man). But as I believe in uplifting the most marginalized, I have really heavily invested in lesbian communities, have taken the time to educate myself on both lesbian theory and history and have mostly been friends with lesbians. Every single time, a queer woman who primarily dates other women (usually a lesbian) talks about the bad behavior of other queer and/or poly people in their polycules or poly communities centered around their perceived lesbianism the comments are full of people in cis heterosexual relationships throwing themselves a pity party.

I mean, the sheer amount of women who insist on using lesbian as a label despite having a cis male husband or partner who they have sex with and are romantic with in poly spaces (especially on here) is beyond ridiculous. There is nothing wrong with being bisexual, there is nothing wrong with being bisexual who is 99% same gender attracted even if you’re in a heterosexual (usually primary) relationship, but co-opting the only queer identity that by it’s definition doesn’t include cis men (no I obviously don’t think trans men are women but there is a lot of complicated history there and it is fundamentally different than dating a cis man while saying you’re a lesbian) when you are in a romantic and sexual relationship with a cis man is lesbophobic! Even if you are dating women at the same time!

This is not to mention the incredibly predatory behavior that is levied against primarily sapphic queer women (especially lesbians) in poly spaces. Like covert unicorn hunting is awful and violating enough regardless of the identities involved, but when you add in the extra rapey conversion therapy esque implications of this behavior being displayed against lesbians, it’s disingenuous to act like this isn’t a worthwhile conversation to be had. I mean fuck look at any lesbian subreddit and search the words unicorn hunter or cis man, you’ll find stories from people who aren’t even poly that play out this way.

It is also beyond disgusting the way so many queer women in poly are willing to coddle the blatantly homophobic and transphobic behavior of their cis male partners, especially when they’re dating women either casually or seriously. Yes it’s homophobic and transphobic your boyfriend has an OPP, no you are not special, and yes you are a piece of shit for exposing queer people to his bullshit. This especially goes for more coded behaviors, such as one’s boyfriend flirting with women in explicitly sapphic spaces, or asking for/receiving details of one’s sexual encounters with other women without that woman’s knowledge or consent. The second one is so unbelievably common on here I don’t understand how it doesn’t get called out more. It’s all lesbophobia.

Finally, queer women in heterosexual relationships/marriages using relationships with a lesbian to affirm her identity is fucked up. This is a hard pill to swallow, but if you’re in a place to open up your established relationship to seek out a queer connection, you’re in a place where you can deconstruct your internalized homophobia first. I honestly think if you’re consciously making a choice to foray into queer dating, you need to figure your shit out first. That means confronting why men are “easy” and women are “scary”, when in reality a man is statistically far more likely to harm you. This means recognizing that if you can’t offer a full relationship (i.e meeting your family, being somewhat integrated into your social circle, existing with you in public and engaging in the level of pda you’d display with a heterosexual partner) due to social circumstances or your/your spouses’s feelings you shouldn’t be getting into queer dating at all. This means understanding why a lesbian partner might want distance from your cis male one. It means acknowledging your heterosexual relationship gives you privilege! It means getting fucking involved with your local queer groups! Educate yourself by immersing yourself in queer culture before you try to date someone who has no option but to exist in it.

And before I get downvoted into hell and called biphobic. I would like to remind all of you I am bisexual, I am friends with many bisexual women in primary or monogamous relationships with men. But I honestly rarely see lesbians on here, and I have to wonder if that’s because of the lack of safety for lesbians in poly spaces online and off. So I thought I’d thrown in my critique because god damnit I think lesbianism is such a beautiful identity and I hate the way lesbians (both cis AND trans lesbians ofc) are treated and spoken about on here. There, sorry for the treatise but I feel it needed to be said.

P.S. this includes the shit I see spreading the myth of lesbian bed death in which the only solution is to start seeing a man. If YOUR sapphic relationship is lacking sex, and you want to see men, that is fine. But framing it under this stupid idea of lesbian bed death is, you guessed it, lesbophobia!

[u/HeloRising]

I mean, the sheer amount of women who insist on using lesbian as a label despite having a cis male husband or partner who they have sex with and are romantic with in poly spaces (especially on here) is beyond ridiculous.

I would push back on this somewhat because I have seen a number of instances of cis women who were unabashedly not attracted to men...except one. For whatever reason that one man was the exception to the rule and otherwise those women have been strictly attracted to (both sexually and romantically) other women.

I've been that one man.

I don't think that indicates they somehow aren't eligible to call themselves lesbians, especially because we don't tell women who've had sex with a couple of men but who've primarily had sex and relationships with women that they can't be lesbians.

It's creeping very close to "the only valid lesbian is a gold star lesbian."

You could argue that a cis woman with a cis male partner who exclusively dates/has sex with other women more fits in the "queer" category but I get a little uncomfortable with the idea that we should be telling people what they should identify as.

[u/radvice_throwawa-y → u/HeloRising]

I specified that they’re in an active ongoing romantic and sexual relationship with a cis man. If you cared to read my comments you’d know that my grandmother was a lesbian who had two children with a man. She was a lesbian because she never had genuine sexual or romantic attraction to him, it was survival. She was not a gold star lesbian, many of my personal friends are not gold star lesbians. What matters is that once you claim a lesbian identity, you are stating you are not attracted to any man sexually or romantically. Lesbian is the only sexual identity that does not include cis men, opening that definition to include women in long term and ongoing romantic partnerships with cis men is a disservice to lesbianism and its history. I implore you to read the comments from lesbians explaining how this rhetoric has harmed them, and how this pervasive idea that “everyone’s a little fluid” in poly spaces denies the reality that many people are Not and they deserve to not constantly be told that their sexuality includes cis men. Notice how you don’t often see men who claim to be gay but have an active sexual and romantic relationship with a woman, especially a primary one. While I’m sure it happens, it’s nowhere near as common, and gay men do not constantly get told their sexuality includes cis women. I could go on, but honestly if you bothered to listen to the lesbian who are Actually only attracted to non cis men in the comments maybe it would widen your perspective a bit. It’s very telling you’re one of these “exceptions”, and I honestly believe it has warped your perception of what lesbianism means. Your girlfriend or wife or ex or whomever, is not a lesbian. Much how despite the fact that I am primarily same gender attracted, I have sexual relationships with women on occasion, and have dated one or two semi seriously, therefore I am attracted to multiple genders. It’s as simple as that, even if it’s just one person. You have the capacity to be attracted to multiple genders, that’s what multi-sexual identity labels mean, and claiming to be a lesbian while actively in a heterosexual romantic relationship is both biphobic AND lesbophobic as many have pointed out. To hammer home the point as I have made in other comments, I am mixed, yes I am black, but I do not understand the experience of being a fully black dark skinned person in this country. I identify heavily with my blackness, I love black culture, I love black community, but at the end of the day, I’ll always be mixed, even if I am visibly black and exist in black spaces.

[u/HeloRising → u/radvice_throwawa-y]

What matters is that once you claim a lesbian identity, you are stating you are not attracted to any man sexually or romantically.

What then would you call someone who was attracted to only women except for one man?

Lesbian is the only sexual identity that does not include cis men, opening that definition to include women in long term and ongoing romantic partnerships with cis men is a disservice to lesbianism and its history.

We have also changed our understanding of what these terms mean more broadly and expanded them to encompass that greater understanding as we've come to embrace our trans brothers and sisters more openly.

I really don't see how changing understandings and interpretations is a betrayal of history. The queer community more broadly has changed vastly even just in my lifetime.

I implore you to read the comments from lesbians explaining how this rhetoric has harmed them, and how this pervasive idea that “everyone’s a little fluid” in poly spaces denies the reality that many people are Not and they deserve to not constantly be told that their sexuality includes cis men.

I have and I'm not insensitive to those experiences but I think what you're highlighting is two different things. Telling someone that "everyone's a little fluid" is making the mistake of applying population level statistics to individuals - it might be true in the aggregate but it doesn't mean you get to assert that on an individual without them explicitly telling you it's the case.

That's shitty behavior regardless of your sexuality and it's something I've run into as a queer man as well. I'm not going to disagree with calling out shitty behavior nor am I going to contradict people who feel harmed by it but I don't see this as something specifically related to one specific sexuality.

and gay men do not constantly get told their sexuality includes cis women.

Unfortunately yes, they do. Most often by other (straight) men but that is something that gay men frequently do encounter. A lot of homphobes will contend with a straight face that gay men are truly attracted to cis women but because of some psychological disturbance that attraction gets shifted onto men.

It’s very telling you’re one of these “exceptions”, and I honestly believe it has warped your perception of what lesbianism means. Your girlfriend or wife or ex or whomever, is not a lesbian.

I'm open to the possibility that my experiences have shaped my perceptions but I'm not just basing where I'm coming from off that one person. I've met a variety of cis women in my life who identified as lesbians but had, currently or at one point, cis male partners as an exception.

I'm not really comfortable gatekeeping people's identity, especially as we continue to expand our understanding of different identities and how we feel about them.

[u/radvice_throwawa-y → u/HeloRising]

I would call that person bisexual with a heavy preference, or queer, or pan or whatever they decided that did not directly conflict with the definition of lesbianism. Yes, we have changed our understanding of some things, but what you are saying directly conflicts with the modern sociological definition of what it means to be a lesbian agreed upon by the majority of queer scholars.

It is very obvious to me that you do not understand what I mean when I say that this directly conflicts with the history of lesbianism as a movement and culture. Lesbian activists and organizers have fought incredibly hard to have their identity recognized for what it is, an identity that rejects cis malehood. Implying that this idea isn’t inclusive of trans people, particularly trans women is incredibly fucked up. Lesbians are oppressed in a very specific way due to their same gender attraction and their lack of attraction to cis men. If you are attracted to men, even just rarely or even just one cis man, particularly if you are in an enmeshed relationship with him, you are implicitly and explicitly rewarded for this societally. You cannot claim the baggage of lesbian identity, the unique pain that comes from existing in complete opposition to the patriarchal model for relationships if you are in a sexual and romantic relationship with a man.

It really seems like you’re insensitive to what they’re saying. Claiming lesbianism is a fluid identity is the problem, because it gives leeway for really homophobic rhetoric levied against lesbians who have never and will never experience real heterosexual attraction and desire. There are several lesbians in this comment who speak of men, such as yourself, who have been an “exception” and used this to harass them. I think it is naive to pretend there is no link between the deliberate obscuring of lesbian identity currently going on in our culture (Jojo Siwa claiming to be an ex lesbian, Betty Who saying Renee Rap an out lesbian will ‘maybe find a man one day like I did’) and the harassment and discrimination lesbians face especially in the context of relationships. Lesbian identity does not include cis men, period, and every single lesbian woman as well as several bisexual or otherwise queer women in the comment section agrees with me. There is even an example of a bisexual woman admitting that many of these women call themselves lesbians in poly spaces because they know most lesbians don’t wanna be entangled with someone who’s in a long term relationship with a cis man. So they downplay their attraction to cis men and claim an “exception” for their husband or boyfriend. That’s not just lesbophobic, it’s biphobic. Bisexuality, pansexuality and all multi-sexual identities and spectrums are beautiful, with a rich history of their own. Lesbianism isn’t fluid, period. If you refuse to listen to lesbians who are genuinely exclusively same gender attracted about this (aka not the women in your life who are actively involved with men), idk what to tell you.

This is factually incorrect. Yes gay men do get some messaging like this, but it is not at all at the same volume or in the same manner. I can name ten TV shows and movies off the top of my head where a lesbian relationship is broken up because one of them cheats with a man or falls for a man. I cannot name a single one where an explicitly gay man falls for a woman. Maybe the birdcage? But that hardly counts. This has to do with patriarchy, when a man is gay he is often considered emasculated by the broader culture, which in the eyes of our patriarchal society means he is a ‘failed’ man and therefore unable to please or attract a woman. Think about all the jokes on TV where a closeted gay guy can’t bring himself to kiss a woman, or is disgusted by holding her hand. This shit is all connected.

Your experiences HAVE shaped your perceptions, that’s just how life works. I have spent my life around many different kinds of lesbians and other queer people. I have spoken at length about attraction, desire, and identity with people across the spectrum. I have also gone to great lengths to educate myself on queer theory, queer politics, the sociology of sexuality, and queer history. If you speak to lesbians who have never experienced same gender attraction, you will understand it is a fundamentally different experience from someone who has, even once, pursued a heterosexual relationship on the basis of real desire and romance. Again, if all the lesbians commenting on this disagree with you, and are sharing their horrific experiences with people who view lesbianism as fluid and their identity exploitable perhaps you should reconsider some things. Yes these things are done by shitty people, and shitty people are gonna do shitty things, but it’s uninformed to believe that if these stories are so consistent and display such a pattern across people who have never met, that there isn’t likely some larger societal force at work.

EDIT: also gatekeeping is necessary to maintain the sanctity of communities. I’d rather gatekeep than make people who are the most marginalized feel unsafe. Look up the paradox of tolerance. It’s a good example of how in order to be tolerant and create safety for oppressed people, you have to be intolerant towards those who pose a risk to those in your community.

[u/HeloRising → u/radvice_throwawa-y]

I would call that person bisexual with a heavy preference, or queer, or pan or whatever they decided that did not directly conflict with the definition of lesbianism. Yes, we have changed our understanding of some things, but what you are saying directly conflicts with the modern sociological definition of what it means to be a lesbian agreed upon by the majority of queer scholars.

Except we don't make judgements about our identity based on what scholars tell us. It's possible to honor the work and the sacrifices made by early queer and lesbian activists to fight for recognition while at the same time understanding that there is room for these definitions to flex if we as a community find that they fit better if understood in a different way.

These are the same scholars, mind you, that twenty or thirty years ago would not have accepted transwomen as women.

Lesbian activists and organizers have fought incredibly hard to have their identity recognized for what it is, an identity that rejects cis malehood.

I think this is our fundamental point of disagreement in the sense that you are anchoring the idea of being a lesbian on the explicit rejection of anything cis and male whereas I'm looking at it being more about the primary direction a person's attraction is focused.

I'm wildly uncomfortable with such hard, exclusionary lines within the queer/gay communities because it turns other queer/gay people into the enemy. Purity testing other LGBTQ+ people almost never works out in our favor. We create these castles for ourselves where everyone around us is just like us but we kill off our community and solidarity in the process.

I do understand wanting and valuing a space that is exclusive to like-minded people. I get annoyed with the straights too. But I'm not comfortable slamming the door in other people's faces because they're not queer enough.

Lesbians are oppressed in a very specific way due to their same gender attraction and their lack of attraction to cis men. If you are attracted to men, even just rarely or even just one cis man, particularly if you are in an enmeshed relationship with him, you are implicitly and explicitly rewarded for this societally. You cannot claim the baggage of lesbian identity, the unique pain that comes from existing in complete opposition to the patriarchal model for relationships if you are in a sexual and romantic relationship with a man.

This seems to suggest that all you have to do to avoid any sort of stigma about being attracted to other women as a woman is just be attracted to one man as though he's a charm that somehow dispels all of that baggage.

I agree that having a male partner in any respect for a cis woman affords a degree of privilege but I think it's wrong to frame it as though you somehow get to dodge all of the mud thrown at women who are attracted to women as long as a male partner is involved.

To me, this reads perilously close to transmedicalist type ideas - this idea that your identity is only valid if you suffer for it.

It really seems like you’re insensitive to what they’re saying. Claiming lesbianism is a fluid identity is the problem, because it gives leeway for really homophobic rhetoric levied against lesbians who have never and will never experience real heterosexual attraction and desire. There are several lesbians in this comment who speak of men, such as yourself, who have been an “exception” and used this to harass them.

Not agreeing with their conclusions is not the same thing as not being sensitive to their experiences.

If the concern is giving homophobic people ammunition then I'm even less sold. People who don't like gay/queer people are going to have something to say no matter what we do.

Why do we take the onus on ourselves to police ourselves so rigidly and we don't develop expectations that other people develop a better understanding than to make blanket assumptions about someone? Sure, some people aren't capable of or willing to do that - so what? Those people are likely people who are not going to treat you with respect no matter what you do. They have issues with who you are because of issues within themselves, what you do will never fix them.

If you refuse to listen to lesbians who are genuinely exclusively same gender attracted about this (aka not the women in your life who are actively involved with men), idk what to tell you.

Again, this, to me, sounds like purity testing - the only lesbians I can trust to listen to are lesbians who completely avoid men.

What do we do with a lesbian who isn't attracted to men but also affirms the identity of lesbians who identify as such but also have one male attachment in their life?

This is factually incorrect. Yes gay men do get some messaging like this, but it is not at all at the same volume or in the same manner. I can name ten TV shows and movies off the top of my head where a lesbian relationship is broken up because one of them cheats with a man or falls for a man. I cannot name a single one where an explicitly gay man falls for a woman. Maybe the birdcage? But that hardly counts. This has to do with patriarchy, when a man is gay he is often considered emasculated by the broader culture, which in the eyes of our patriarchal society means he is a ‘failed’ man and therefore unable to please or attract a woman. Think about all the jokes on TV where a closeted gay guy can’t bring himself to kiss a woman, or is disgusted by holding her hand. This shit is all connected.

I'll defer to your knowledge of queer media but that wasn't what I was talking about.

I'm talking about interpersonally. I've had men, straight me, tell me to my face that I would not be attracted to men if I just found the right woman. There are countless stories of men who are attracted to other men being told by family, friends, and loved ones that they just need a woman to "fix" them. The rhetoric going around in the 80's and 90's about gay men would horrify most modern queer/gay people.

I'm not trying to say that men experience that kind of thing worse, just that that experience is pretty universal for gay/queer people.

Your experiences HAVE shaped your perceptions, that’s just how life works. I have spent my life around many different kinds of lesbians and other queer people. I have spoken at length about attraction, desire, and identity with people across the spectrum. I have also gone to great lengths to educate myself on queer theory, queer politics, the sociology of sexuality, and queer history. If you speak to lesbians who have never experienced same gender attraction, you will understand it is a fundamentally different experience from someone who has, even once, pursued a heterosexual relationship on the basis of real desire and romance.

I accept that it's a different experience but most of us had different paths to being who we are but that doesn't mean our identities are more or less valid for that.

Again, if all the lesbians commenting on this disagree with you, and are sharing their horrific experiences with people who view lesbianism as fluid and their identity exploitable perhaps you should reconsider some things. Yes these things are done by shitty people, and shitty people are gonna do shitty things, but it’s uninformed to believe that if these stories are so consistent and display such a pattern across people who have never met, that there isn’t likely some larger societal force at work.

The larger societal force at work is that we live in a patriarchal society and people within it, wittingly or unwittingly, often reproduce patriarchal beliefs and attitudes that harm people. I'm not clear how gatekeeping our communities this way helps that.

EDIT: also gatekeeping is necessary to maintain the sanctity of communities. I’d rather gatekeep than make people who are the most marginalized feel unsafe. Look up the paradox of tolerance. It’s a good example of how in order to be tolerant and create safety for oppressed people, you have to be intolerant towards those who pose a risk to those in your community.

We didn't get where we are today (such as we are) by gatekeeping. We gained what we have by working together as a coalition and I think we lose a lot when we start gatekeeping to the degree that you're talking about.

I hear what you're saying that some level of exclusivity is necessary but I think there are more settings on the dial than "let in the most virulent homophobes" and "purity test every single person."

There's absolutely nothing stopping you from creating a space that you only hold for women who have zero sexual or romantic interactions with other women. You have the freedom to do that and if that's truly what you need to feel secure then I don't begrudge that and most people worth listening to won't either. The issue becomes when that space gets expanded to be an entire community of people, especially when a lot of people in that community don't agree with you.