Since I started grappling with my sexuality (for the second time) earlier this year, I’ve noticed just how many people seem to deliberately avoid using the word ‘lesbian’ to refer to gay women – and since Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette debuted on Netflix, it’s only resulted in yet more examples of writers, journalists and commentators using other words to describe lesbians.
Despite Hannah referring to coming to terms with her sexuality as realising she was “a little bit lesbian”, describing herself as a “big, fat, depressed, lesbian” and a “miserable lesbian”, and describing her humour as “lesbian humour”, countless outlets have repeatedly referred to her exclusively as a ‘gay woman’ or simply ‘queer’.
If these articles include the word ‘lesbian’ at all (which 4 out of the 12 articles I looked at didn’t), it’s because they’re quoting Hannah herself (6 out of the 12 articles I looked at fall into this category).
That means that out of 12 articles I looked at, only 2 used the word ‘lesbian’ in the article text itself. One of those was an interview with Hannah, and the other was on Autostraddle, a website that exists specifically for LGBTQ women.
I know that ‘gay’ is a perfectly acceptable word to use for women who are only attracted to other women, and I know many women who use it to describe themselves. But I want to talk about why so many, including people who could use it themselves, shy away from doing so, even in reference to women who explicitly identify as lesbians.
I suspect it has to do with the image of lesbians as the ultimate ‘man-hating’ feminists – a cultural holdover from second-wave feminists who didn’t shy away from talking about their lesbianism and their lack of interest in male attention. This association with the second-wave, combined with the fact that the majority of famous lesbians (think Ellen Degeneres or KD Lang) are older, means that many young people see it as outdated and frumpy.
As for why other LGBTQ people avoid the word, perhaps it’s because many young people associate lesbianism with trans-exclusionary ideologies that also came of age in feminism’s second wave. Many people are quick to assume that being a lesbian automatically makes someone a ‘TERF’ – that is, a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist.
I’m not going to argue that lesbians who exclude trans people from their activism and their lives don’t exist, because that would be demonstrably untrue. But transphobia isn’t a lesbian invention, and anyone who isn’t trans is capable of perpetuating it. Probably the most well-known TERF is Germaine Greer, who is decidedly not a lesbian.
Another potential reason for the aversion to the word ‘lesbian’ is that younger LGBTQ people are more likely to embrace the idea of sexuality and gender being fluid, and ‘lesbian’ isn’t sufficiently fluid.
Where ‘gay’ has become an umbrella term much like ‘queer’, ‘lesbian’ hasn’t. It’s too rigid, too old-fashioned.
And I can’t help but feel like reprimanding women for not being interested in relationships with men is itself old-fashioned homophobia repackaged using social justice jargon.
Unfortunately, insisting that everyone’s sexuality is fluid doesn’t automatically empower young people who are coming to terms with their identities; it harms them. I convinced myself for years that I was bisexual, partly because I had the same associations with the word ‘lesbian’ that I described above, and partly because I was terrified of letting go of the potential ability to end up with a man.
Hayley Kiyoko, celebrated lesbian icon.
Avoiding the word ‘lesbian’ only compounds these problems. If a celebrity has chosen to use gay instead of lesbian to describe themselves, like Amandla Stenberg did when she came out last month, we should respect that.
But if someone explicitly refers to themselves as a lesbian, the way Hayley Kiyoko does, or the way Hannah Gadsby does, people writing about them should make an effort to respect that.
Normalising the word for a new generation outside of the context of porn or criticising transphobic feminists is important. The word ‘lesbian’ isn’t inherently dirty, or salacious, or offensive, and using it when it’s relevant and challenging people’s discomfort with it can only help remove some of the stigma that’s attached itself to an identity that’s important to a lot of people.