GABRIELLA GARDNER
Special to The Leader
It is no secret that the LGBTQ+ community has faced lifetimes of oppression.
While things have become more accepting and tolerant, there is still a long way to go. Homophobia has not gone away fully, but rather turned more towards subtlety and microaggressions.
In addition to this, a lot of people don’t address the different forms of homophobia, and how each identity within the queer community experiences their own unique type of discrimination and stereotypes.
There is specific harassment that many queer women or feminine-identifying people experience, specifically from heterosexual cisgender men. These men are frequently homophobic towards homosexual men, deeming their relationships disgusting, while fetishizing and sexualizing lesbian relationships. They tend not to view these relationships as real, and instead as something existing exclusively for the male gaze or fantasy.
Many of these men hold the belief that they can “turn” a lesbian straight, therefore seeing them as a challenge. They will ask them if they need a third in their relationship, or say how they just haven’t met the right man yet.
It is so damaging to the experience of being a queer woman.
While it is not directly a hate crime, it is still harmful and pushes a dangerous narrative that women exist for male pleasure, a concept deeply rooted in sexism and misogyny.
These men only have these thoughts and opinions about women who fit their standards of what a woman should act or look like. They will sexualize relationships between two feminine women, but if it is a relationship between a feminine and masculine woman, or two masculine women, they will project similar hate that is present in gay men’s relationships.
They will say things like, “Why not just date a man then?” or “Who is the man in the relationship?” just because a woman presents herself as masculine. They believe that masculinity is owned by men rather than it being a style or quality. It is important to remember that there is no “man” in a lesbian relationship, because the relationship is, by definition, between two women. This is just further pushing gender roles and heteronormativity onto queerness when the essence of being queer is to break those binaries and boundaries.
People should also acknowledge that most erotic content of women loving women is quite literally produced for the pleasure of straight men, therefore making it inaccurate and unrealistic. It makes it unenjoyable for the actual queer women who it should be created for in the first place, as Ash Marquis talks about in an article from Youth Outright.
Not only this, but in general, queer women’s representation in media is highly disappointing. Almost all of the content produced of romances between two women ends tragically. One of the women ends up leaving the other for a man, or discovering it was a phase. While it is important to recognize the concept of internalized homophobia and compulsory heterosexuality because they are very real things that lesbians experience, it doesn’t hurt to have a happy ending sometimes too.
Love stories between gay men are often happier overall, meanwhile, lesbian relationships are portrayed as more miserable and overall emotional, which just reinforces that misogyny. It basically implies that women cannot truly be content with each other and need a man for that job.
Pieces in media that follow gay male relationships such as “Heartstopper” and “Red, White, and Royal Blue” are receiving lots of recognition while even the rare realistic lesbian media that we get for our representation often gets canceled after just a couple seasons. This has been a pattern with numerous television shows with lesbian storylines, especially on Netflix (“Everything Sucks!”, “I Am Not Okay With This”, “Atypical”, “First Kill”).
“It is a purge of queer TV,” comments queer news platform Them. Another trend that supports the idea that queer TV is being purged by networks is the killing off of queer characters.
It is similar to the same concept of people of color in movies or television shows. The gay characters are usually the first ones to go, because they are viewed as more disposable or “expendable” as television tropes often describe. This is also known as “burying your gays.”
It is interesting, however, that the roles are reversed when it comes to stereotypes about lesbians from heterosexual cisgender women. They will often label queer women as “gross” and “predatory.” These women will make assumptions that lesbians must be interested or sexually attracted to them just because of their sexual orientation. A straight woman may find out another woman is a lesbian and ask, “You don’t have a crush on me, do you?” but when the lesbian says no, she is somehow offended that she is not her type.
Meanwhile, these same women will idolize white gay men, and form strange obsessions with having a gay best friend.
When it comes to queer women, what makes the experience different from queer men, especially within the realm of internalized homophobia, is compulsory heterosexuality, or “comphet” for short. Tilly Brogan from Our Streets Now defines this as, “how our heteronormative society conditions women to view their interactions, connections and relationships with men as romantic or sexual.”
While some LGBTQ+ individuals know they are queer from a very young age, there are also many people who don’t realize, or come to accept themselves until much later in life. Because of this, a lot of people, specifically heterosexual individuals, will make assumptions or form opinions that being gay is a choice, and it is not something that you are born with. In reality, though, many queer individuals, especially lesbians, are not coming to terms with their sexuality sooner due to the pressures of heteronormativity, and the patriarchal society we live in.
The world is so centered around men that women don’t take into consideration that they can be attracted to women. As little girls, we are already indoctrinated by all the movies and books we read that we need a handsome prince to come to our rescue to live happily ever after. Besides the point that women can be independent and do not need a partner in the first place, we also were never given the opportunity to consider if we wanted to fall in love with a woman instead.
A lot of ignorance comes from being uneducated. While valid questions may arise from pure curiosity, asking someone who has come out as a lesbian, “What about (insert old boyfriend or male crush)?” is unfair. These questions further reveal a double standard because many times when men come out, people do not question their relationship history. Men will say that they were just in the closet and that the signs were always there.
Why is it different for women?