I’m going to be 100% honest in all of this so uhhhh bare with me. I’ve known for years that I’m only attracted to women. Of course I get the occasional “what if I’m not”, but I know deep down that I am uncomfortable being with a man in any way. The thing is that for years I refused to call myself a lesbian... This is coming from someone with extremely supportive parents and one of which is a very active ally. I would always say “I just like girls” or “I’m queer” or “I’m gay” and never “I’m a lesbian”. Despite the fact that lesbian was what I definitionally was I wouldn’t call myself it because of the taste it left in my mouth.
The term lesbian is so actively poisoned both inside the community and outside of it. Outside of the community we are sexualized, harassed, seen as less, and many other things, but what actually affected me the most was the inner community poison. “lesbians aren’t progressive enough” and “lesbians are all exclusionary, biphobic, aphobic, transphobic, or terfs”. This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to nasty comments about lesbians I’ve heard from inside the community. It took me two years to finally realize that MY TERM, that LESBIAN, isn’t a dirty word and should be fucking celebrate for the wonderful sexuality it is.
Sadly, lesbian erasure is also rampant in this community which is what can make it hard to take pride in your sexuality when there is no pride associated with it. I’ve seen lesbian erasure with my own eyes and yes, it is even at your so called most “inclusive” places. At Pride where I have to constantly search for a lesbian flag and don’t actually find one by the end, on my campus where I couldn’t get MY flag for national coming out day (meanwhile ace, bi, trans, and gay people can,,, we were the only ones left out) and we were completely erased from the lgbt history boards in our dorms despite having some of the richest history. Lesbian erasure is lesbophobia. You can’t just forget about the first letter of *L*GBTQ. You can’t just mention us once by name. We deserve to have are flag with the rest of them and our history told. How is anyone going to educate themselves on what lesbians actually are if we are erased so often?
So, for any of the lesbians, gay girls who won’t call themselves lesbians, or people who are questioning if they are a lesbian: lesbian is not a dirty word and it’s an amazing sexuality! please, for the love of god, just understand that there is nothing wrong with being a lesbian and all those nasty things people throw at us from both inside and outside of the community aren’t true!
(for anyone that actually read all that ily pls take care of yourself)
