For Lesbian Day of Visibility 2023, the team behind HER’s social media celebrated by calling lesbians bigots for only finding the female sex attractive. This should go without saying, for anyone who is not a raging homophobe: lesbianism is not a choice, let alone discrimination against the male sex.
You would think this poor treatment would apply to heterosexuals too, right? Because the “sex” in homosexuality and heterosexuality refers to biology, not fucking. But no. 78% of lesbians on the Lesbian Herstory Instagram (1050 responders, poll up for 8 hours) feel that there is more pressure on lesbians to be “inclusive” and go against our female-exclusive attraction than there is on anyone else.
Attraction is a sex-based science.
Nobody would dare tell a heterosexual man that he must find male bodies attractive in order to pass the purity sniff test. Even though, “when it comes to responding to pheromone-like chemical signals, lesbian women are much more like heterosexual men than their straight counterparts,” according to Science.
Straight women and gay men respond to a whiff of “a progesterone-derived molecule found in men’s sweat [AND],” in the same way. “The front part of their brain’s hypothalamus, which plays a role in sexual behavior, starts to rev up. Heterosexual men, on the other hand, don’t respond to AND. For them, EST [estratetraenoal; found in female urine] hits the spot.”
Guess who else doesn’t respond to AND, but does respond to EST? Lesbians. “The team gave 12 lesbians a sniff of AND and EST and used positron emission tomography to measure blood flow in their brains. They then compared these results to those obtained from their previous studies on heterosexual men and women. Much like heterosexual men, lesbians responded to EST but not AND.”
Lesbians are attracted to the female sex, regardless of presentation, which angers homophobes. When I was fresh out of the closet in my late teens, a straight woman said to me that she couldn’t understand how lesbians can be attracted to women who “looked like dudes.” Relying only on gender stereotypes that reinforce heteropatriarchy, she eliminated butch lesbians from qualifying as female, because they dare subvert the misogynistic associations with womanhood. They often have short hair and no makeup on. They often walk with an “unladylike” swagger. They have no interest in appeasing the male gaze. They take up space.
“Why not just date a man?” She questioned me, a lesbian more into a female’s gender non-conformity than makeup and dresses. How is that progressive? Equating females with feminine expectations is the most regressive thing imaginable. Lesbians aren’t attracted to the feminine expectations placed on women, they’re attracted to the female sex. Sometimes what we find attractive is the way women don’t conform to feminine expectations.
Sex is not a human right.
Everybody deserves basic human rights such as water, food and shelter. But, like we keep reminding incels, receiving somebody’s romantic and/or sexual attraction is not a human right. 58% of lesbians (800 responders, 6 hours) have been told that their sexual orientation is exclusionary – as if homosexuality deprives the opposite sex of something owed to them.
Sex isn’t a human right because nobody owes you, or anybody, their body. Manipulating somebody’s consent by calling them bigoted for not finding you attractive is rape culture. Anybody who seeks identity-related validation by emotionally blackmailing others into sex or dating is displaying predatory behaviours. Why would you want to have sex with someone who cannot find you attractive?
Liberation is not found in a lesbian’s underpants. The notion that somebody can “unlearn their sexual preferences,” as if it is possible for lesbians to force attraction to the opposite sex, is conversion therapy rhetoric. “Some right-wing religious groups promote the concept that an individual can change their sexual orientation” through “prayer or other religious efforts, or through so-called “reparative” or “conversion” therapy,” according to HRC.
Guilting or shaming lesbians for their female homosexuality is rape culture.
It’s more than Christian, fringe, But I’m a Cheerleader (1999)-style corrective practices in 2023. Today, the very organisations intended to represent and defend lesbians are treating female homosexuality like something unspeakable – on the day we’re supposed to be most visible.
Lesbians are allowed to think about the sinful act of only being attracted to the female sex, but cannot verbalise it without being crucified. On the Lesbian Day of Visibility, the HER team told lesbians to be more bisexual or be more silent: “listen you’re probably not the only LGBTQIA person who needs to reflect personally on why their attraction isn’t inclusive AF,” they wrote. “As long as you keep that [lesbianism] to yourself, and don’t go harassing trans people like a terf, HER is here for your journey.”
Female homosexuality is not a punishment against trans people. It’s not a personal attack. Communicating your innate attraction, including articulating its boundaries, is not harassment or abuse. It is not hateful to be homosexual.
The end of HER’s aforementioned “journey” is correcting lesbianism with “queerness”: the only fluid, “inclusive AF” sexual orientation. A large, influential platform, for same-sex attracted women to connect, advocating for lesbians to unlearn homosexuality, is encouraging unwanted sex en masse. If it is “immoral” to naturally not be attracted to the male sex, then forcing intimacy with them, against your own will, is the only way to “repent.”
How many lesbians are currently having sex they don’t want to have, with the sex they’re not attracted to, to meet the accommodating expectation of absolute inclusivity? 50% of lesbians on the Lesbian Herstory Instagram page (800 responders, 5 hours) said that they have had sex they didn’t want to have, in order to appease the other person’s feelings. Sex is not a pacifier.
Lesbianism is not a feminist utopia.
If people aren’t forcing lesbians to pretend to be attracted to the opposite sex, then women who are attracted to males are identifying as lesbians and speaking on behalf of us. “Bi-lesbian,” a contemporary manifestation of political lesbianism, is a contradictory but “inclusive” form of homophobia. Both “bi-lesbian” and political lesbianism suggest that male-attracted women can or should identify as lesbians, for feminism or to declare the intention to only date women.
Lesbianism isn’t a matter of abstaining from males. Sexual orientation is based on attraction, not action. Lesbians who date men for safety, despite not being attracted to them, are still lesbians. A bisexual woman who only ever dates women, but is attracted to males, is still bisexual.
Lesbians don’t exist to make others feel better about themselves. Political lesbianism and “bi-lesbianism” deny that females can oppress on the axis of sexual orientation. If female homophobia was acknowledged, then male-attracted women identifying as lesbians would be seen for what it is: appropriative and homophobic.
The way lesbians are policed and taught to police each other – to make sure we are accommodating and inclusive of the sex we aren’t attracted to – is absolutely a symptom of our disempowerment. Heterosexuals are not being burnt at the stake over their exclusive attraction to the opposite sex. It’s naturalised and normalised, not “exclusionary.”
If you deem a lesbian abusive for saying she can only find females attractive, the definition of female homosexuality, then you are a homophobic threat to lesbians everywhere. You aim to remove lesbians’ right to assert and protect their sexual orientation. You attempt to erode lesbianism altogether: the word, definition, class, community and material reality. You are a danger to us.
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