My Lesbian Visibility
So yesterday was Lesbian Visibility Day and I was too much in a state of euphoria over Janelle Monáe’s coming out as a pansexual, “free-ass mother fucker” in Rolling Stone to post something of my own. But besides reading about Monáe yesterday, I also read this piece that afterellen.com picked up from the wordpress site Lesbians Over Everything. This essay, “Why I’m a Lesbian (and not Queer),” by Bit Blair and Ashley Obinwanne, has given me much to think about. It resonated. Reading it, I realized that I myself have been, for a while now, favoring the word “queer” over lesbian in certain contexts.
Over the years, and especially at the very beginning of my coming out process, I used the word “bisexual” to describe myself. And then after being in a relationship with the same woman for a long time, I eventually embraced the word “lesbian.” But for a while now, especially in the college classrooms where I teach, the word queer has somehow felt much easier for me to identify as rather than referring to myself as a lesbian. This is true despite the fact that “lesbian” has been a much more accurate description of how I live and how I love for more than two decades. As Blair and Obinwanne argue, in their essay: “Queer” is softer, more gentle, more ambiguous. It certainly seems more fashionable these days.
Look, I’m no gold star. I’ve dated men (the same man, in fact, from the time I was 14 until I was almost 20), and a couple others briefly after that. I find men attractive, sometimes, though mostly from a distance these days. After my 17 year relationship with a woman ended several years ago I briefly flirted with dating or sleeping with men again. But then I pretty quickly changed my mind about that being a good idea. It wasn’t what I really wanted.
If queer is meant to indicate flexibility or ambiguity, I’m not really queer despite my occasional attraction. It’s clearer to me now than it ever has been at any point in my life that I can not “go either way.” I really love women. I love being a woman. I love sleeping with women — living with women, feeling intimately and romantically connected to women — well, one woman in particular these days. I suppose maybe it’s important here to qualify that I specifically love cis-gendered women. I hope that doesn’t make me sound transphobic. Basically, just let it be known: I love pussy. And I’m not ashamed to admit it (sorry Mom, I know you hate that word). I’m a lesbian and I think it’s time to start claiming that again. Happy Belated Lesbian Visibility Day!
