Sunday Funday Is Kissing Away Lesbian Stereotypes
KaeLyn
KaeLyn is a 40-year-old hard femme bisexual dino mom. You can typically find her binge-watching TV, standing somewhere with a mic or a sign in her hand, over-caffeinating herself, or just generally doing too many things at once. She lives in Upstate NY with her spouse, a baby T. rex, a scaredy cat, an elderly betta fish, and two rascally rabbits. You can buy her debut book, Girls Resist! A Guide to Activism, Leadership, and Starting a Revolution if you want to, if you feel like it, if that's a thing that interests you or whatever.
KaeLyn has written 230 articles for us.
So excited about the news for Oregon!! Can’t wait to change my license! :D
I LOVE that picture of Silvia Mauro and Analia Pasantino. What a great couple, supporting each other and fighting for each other, and the looks on their faces says it all. Goals.
Yay for the X option in Oregon! I agree that having gender markers on IDs is pointless in general, but I’m glad people who aren’t M or F can have another option. Does anyone know if cops/healthcareworkers/bartenders/other people who check IDs will get any training regarding this? Without training I worry about additional stigma for someone who gets pulled over for speeding, for example. Hopefully this is introduced thoughtfully.
The insidetheblacktriangle project is gorgeous. Loved the work here
1 yay for the x. In related personal news, about to apply for a library card and I’m so glad gender isn’t asked about. It was asked in the bad library where I volunteered and as a joke as if you can tell gender by what ppl look like they’re born as
2 yay for less places having conversion torture, can’t believe ppl still think that’s an ok practice
3 I love the kiss in both in itself and because it turns the notion of a ‘white saviour’ on its head by showing POC in predominantly POC liberal countries can show solidarity with ppl in historically white, currently oppressive countries like Russia
Rachael Zimmerman went to my high school (we didn’t really know each other but I hardly ever forget someone’s face), and in my experience, it wasn’t awful but not necessarily a super hospitable place to be queer. It’s awesome to see her flourishing now and working on such a lovely project! <3
I’ve been following the Inside the Black Triangle project on instagram for the past 2 weeks or so and it makes me so happy to see all the different faces of our community and definitely helps me with the “I don’t look gay” feels :)
Oregon makes me very happy sometimes.
Thanks for sharing my project, “Inside the Black Triangle”.
Please change the spelling of my name. My first name is spelt Rachael.
Also it would be great to hear about you sharing my work before hand.
Thanks
Rachael
Hi, Rachael! Sorry about misspelling your name. It’s fixed.
Also, if you would like me to take down the section about the project and/or any of the pics, please let me know. I’m happy to do so. I was news reporting on the HuffPo piece in this link & news roundup and hoping to drive more traffic to your project directly.
I understand your request and respect your rights as an artist. So my apologies if this came across as not-cool. Just let me know if you want it taken down.
I very much related to what Cee said, more about hating to see the wrong gender marker(for me it’s M and also rather see X) on my license. Like there have been a few times I just though about scratching it off, or covering it with nail-polish. Thankfully, California is also thinking about do this, so I maybe in luck.
The kissing photos from Brazil made me cry. It may be one of those days, but also, it’s the supreme tenderness and sweetness of those kisses against the unthinkable cruelty of what’s being done in Chechnya… yeah.
‘Personal observations have led Rachael to the conclusion that lesbians are mimicking the gender hierarchy. Butch and androgynous women are thought to be more prestigious, while feminine women are less than. Not only do feminine women find themselves defending their sexuality to heterosexuals, but they are often forced to prove themselves to their own community. Acceptance and equality starts from within.’
I’m really loving the apparent open season on butch/androgynous/GNC lesbians within the queer community right now. And by loving, I mean loathing from the depths of my soul.
Agreed. Because it’s super easy to be Butch, right? It’s not like we get any shit from nobody, right? Strange man yelling correctional rape threats is so much fun, right?
visibility is not a privilege. it just makes you an easier target.
autostraddle doesn’t seem to get that.
So easy! Butch women/nb people are literally just men and also responsible for every bad thing in the LGBT community!
Yeah, but what does that have to do about a discussion about conditions/structures within the lesbian community?
Is that a quote from her site or from an interview at the top of your comment? Or are you paraphrasing what you get from her? Her site was down when I went to check it out. All I really have is the Huffpo interview and a few nuggets from the interwebs.
I also have reactions to things like “It’s time to break away from stereotypes and start treating each other equally” because to many people I am the stereotype. What people authentically are may seem a lot like a stereotype to others who don’t understand it. There are so many ways to read just that sentence…from it critiquing the act of stereotyping itself to blaming butches/GNC/etc for the fact that cishets stereotype queers based on our looks. I don’t know what she means without more info.
The issue of stereotypes where butch=queer reminds me of tv shows that say “We have lesbian characters and they’re not your stereotypical lesbians!” because the characters are femme or feminine or not butch. Because it would be what–horrible? contagious?–to have actual butches or studs or masc-of-center queers on tv? I’d love to see the broadest ranges of representation out there. Even with more representation than we’ve ever had in mainstream media there’s so much we see very little of, here’s hoping to having ever more queer-made art, media, etc. (I just started following Slay TV on Twitter. Am excited to watch them and I hope they do plenty of QWOC projects too.)
direct quote from her site.
rachaelzimmerman.com/itbt
Oh man, that is my absolute least favourite trope (after bury your gays), alongside the ‘oh, this woman is masculine, but don’t worry, she’s not a lesbian! we’re so groundbreaking and feminist!!’ Because seriously, where are all these butch lesbians in popular culture? What butch-loving universe are these people living in and can I move there??
Acknowledging femme invisibility in queer women circles-an issue autostraddle has devoted several articles to-and discussing how problematic it is that our culture still equates masculinity with strength and femininity with weakness has nothing to do with “attacking” masculine-of-center women.
Forgive me, but you sound suspiciously similar to transphobic cis women, biphobic lesbians, and racist white feminists.
lol what is this? would you like to address how asking that societal homophobia toward gnc women be addressed makes us “sound suspiciously similar to transphobic cis women, biphobic lesbians, and racist white feminists”? would you like to address that there exist trans and poc butch and gnc women?
why exactly is this kind of comment allowed to stay up?
I mean, I’m literally a femme woman, but okay. Apparently saying that I don’t get the same violent pushback from wider society as butch non-men (butch trans women and WOC in particular!) and criticising the trend where butch women are forcibly misgendered and portrayed as basically men is all I need to be a terrible femmephobic TERF these days.
I think the mistake comes in thinking any discussion on Autostraddle is about “wider society” versus *within queer communities* specifically. Reframe your perspective.
As I’ve read in this fraught discussion, you can criticize away at society as a whole and their treatment of those who don’t conform to het gender norms, but stop pushing back about any discussion of femme erasure (or similar issues) *within* the queer community as if it’s an attack on masculine of center women. It’s not.
PS By my last sentence I meant “It’s not usually”. I don’t want to issue a blanket statement about all such discussions, just the trend I’ve observed.
no, “being butch or gnc as a woman makes you a regressive stereotype and basically a man” is a misogynistic and homophobic attitude. you can reframe all you want, but you’re not getting away from that.
furthermore, why are only some personal observations valid? in every single lgbt group i’ve been in over years of trying, i’ve been seen as basically a failed femme who just needs help to be femme correctly. (would i like to put on makeup? what about now? what about now?) there were no other women who weren’t femme. why are my choices straight people who see me as weird and regressive and gross, or lgbt people who think the exact same thing and think it makes them progressive?
Except that saying that:
-masculine women have male privilege
-they basically amount to men
-lesbian stereotypes are their fault and they should somehow make up for that (rather than, y’know, butches being a historical bedrock of the queer female community)
-and (not in this particular case, but it’s an argument I am seeing with increasing regularity elsewhere) that they are more likely to be abusive and inclined to sexual violence than femme women
is not a rational discussion of issues within the queer community, it’s literally just a distorted version of the message GNC women get from the wider world. That /is/ an attack, and it’s incredibly harmful.
Femme visibility is good! I’m all for it! But that should not come at the cost of insulting, hurting and alienating butches, who in the end are guilty of nothing more than being gender non-conforming in a society which loathes that.
I think the problem lies with Rachael’s original statement, where she says “…lesbians are mimicking the gender hierarchy. Butch and androgynous women are thought to be more prestigious, while feminine women are less than.” But there’s a difference between mimicking the gender hierarchy and subverting it, which is what I think female & lesbian masculinity is about. The implication is, then, that masculine women are “just like” men or somehow reinforcing patriarchy and oppression by being masculine, which is a kinda fucked up thing to say.
And yeah, femme invisibility is a problem. Just like, as other commentors have pointed out, violence and stigma against MOC women is a problem. Our oppressions and experiences can be different without having to compete.
exactly. this isn’t a competition. she can showcase femmes or whatever it is she’s trying to do without all this “not ALL of us are stereotypical mannish butches, GOD” bullshit.
Just for the record, if you go to Zimmerman’s website and see the project, it’s not just femmes or feminine women. It includes a diversity of subjects across the gender expression spectrum from butches and studs to androgynous to femme women. The words may not have been the best way to get that across, but my reading on it by looking at the photos is that the project is to celebrate the wide diversity of expressions and experiences of lesbian identity.
@kaelyn, honestly, given that intro (which i read on her website), i really can’t be bothered with the rest of the project. if an artist wants my attention and analysis, they can start by not insulting me.
i look forward to seeing a celebration of lesbian diversity that doesn’t do this.