Lesbian erasure

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    Lesbian erasure is a form of

    lesbian women or relationships in history, academia, the news media, and other primary sources.[1][2] Lesbian erasure also refers to instances wherein lesbian issues, activism, and identity is deemphasized or ignored within feminist groups[3] or the LGBT community.[1][2]

    In history

    Journalist and author Victoria Brownworth wrote that the erasure of lesbian sexuality from historical records "is similar to the erasure of all autonomous female sexuality: women's sexual desire has always been viewed, discussed and portrayed within the construct and purview of the male gaze."[4] At times, erasure of lesbians is enabled when LGBT organizations fail to recognize the contributions of lesbians, such as when, in 2018, a statement about the Stonewall riots by the U.S. National Center for Lesbian Rights did not acknowledge Stormé DeLarverie's involvement in the uprising.[5]

    Many lesbians participated in the 1916 Easter Uprising against British rule of Ireland, including Kathleen Lynn, Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, Margaret Skinnider, Elizabeth O'Farrell and Julia Grenan. Their contributions and sexualities were long ignored or overlooked.[6][7][8] Mary McAuliffe of University College Dublin noted that for years, biographers were "resistan[t]" to the idea of describing Lynn and ffrench-Mullen as being a couple, in spite of evidence that this was the case.[9][10]

    In the United States, Kathy Kozachenko became the first openly gay political candidate to win an election in 1974. However, this achievement in LGBT history was incorrectly ascribed to San Francisco politician Harvey Milk.[11][12]

    In 1976, French lesbian feminist and cofounder of the Mouvement de libération des femmes (MLF), Monique Wittig, left France for the United States.[3] This decision was motivated by the fierce resistance she faced from other feminists when she attempted to create lesbian groups within the MLF.[3] At the time, the word "lesbian" was deemed as being an "un-French" American import, and Wittig recalled other MLF members seeking to "paralyse and destroy lesbian groups."[3]

    Janine E. Carlse of

    country's history. During the Apartheid era, Carlse writes, black lesbians faced a combined "double oppression" of both heteropatriarchy and racist segregation policies.[13] After Apartheid ended, they continue to face erasure from other South Africans who consider it "un-African," and are therefore (in the words of Thabo Msibi) "denied cultural recognition and are subject to shaming, harassment, discrimination and violence."[13][14]

    In popular media

    In literature

    Some contemporary historians believe that American poet Emily Dickinson had an intimate relationship with her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert, leading some academics to assert that she was a lesbian.[15] Dickinson experts Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith wrote that Gilbert was a muse to Dickinson, stating that "Emily's correspondence to Susan unequivocally acknowledges that their emotional, spiritual, and physical communion is vital to her creative insight and sensibilities."[16] However, the Emily Dickinson Museum is ambiguous when discussing Dickinson's sexuality.[17]

    In music

    Author and women's history scholar Bonnie J. Morris wrote that many lesbian singers and musicians are erased from music and its history. As an example, she discusses a time when she asked her students to name "five openly-lesbian role models" and none mentioned a musical artist; showing that the presence of lesbians in the music world is overlooked or ignored in media.[18]

    In television

    Lesbian characters in 1990's American television were often depicted as side characters with little to no definitive information on whether they were lesbians or not. If an episode portrayed two women kissing or some form of homoromantic interactions between female characters, there would be a parental advisory for that specific episode. This was seen with the series Roseanne, where some advertising companies requested that their commercials be excluded from the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" episode. There was also the issue of Ellen DeGeneres coming out on her show Ellen through her character Morgan in "The Puppy Episode", which received considerable pushback and backlash because of heteronormative views and the heterocentric culture of television.[19]

    In scholarship

    While the traditional academic canon has recognized the contributions of

    AIDS research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Smith argues that these erasures result from sexism and suggests that these issues should be addressed directly by lesbian activism.[21]

    In advertising

    Marcie Bianco, of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, said that lesbian erasure occurs in advertising. Advertisers do not target lesbians when they are publicizing products to LGBT audiences. As an example, she cited the collapse of AfterEllen, which she says resulted from a lack of advertisers. The former Editor in Chief of AfterEllen, Karman Kregloe, stated that advertisers do not think of lesbians as women, and Trish Bendix observed that lesbians are assumed to like anything gay, even if it is male-focused.[22]

    Lesbian identification

    Some lesbian activists, such as Bonnie J. Morris, Robin Tyler[23] and Ashley Obinwanne, screenwriter and co-founder of the platform Lesbians Over Everything,[24] say the term queer, when used to describe lesbians, is a "disidentification" that contributes to lesbian invisibility.[25][26] In an interview about her 2016 novel Beyond the Screen Door, author Julia Diana Robertson discovered that her self-identification as a lesbian and her description of the novel's genre was changed to queer and queerness in the published quotes.[27][28]

    Shannon Keating of BuzzFeed said that the increased acceptability of non-binary genders, the rise of LGBT diversity, and concerns about gender essentialism have contributed to (what she describes as) making the term "uncool," and that a reason for the fading of "lesbian" as a term is because usage has evolved towards more inclusive terminology.[29] Christina Cauterucci of Slate likewise attributed rejection of the term to inclusivity and wanting to use a broader term for spaces that were once traditionally labeled lesbian spaces.[30]

    Mary Grace Lewis of

    The Advocate, arguing that lesbian is not a dirty word, stated that it "has been villainized in the media because [lesbians] serve no purpose to the people who control it." She said that lesbian stereotypes seen in the media are not representative of the term, and that women accepting that they are not sexually attracted to men should not fear acknowledging it or feel that it is limiting. She felt that the more the term is used, "the more girls and women [will] feel comfortable" using it and the less it can be weaponized.[31]

    In relation to transgender people

    See also: Feminist views on transgender topics

    Butch lesbians and transgender men

    In The Stranger, Katie Herzog states that some younger lesbians report having felt pressured to transition and later detransitioned, with some people using detransition stories to frame gender transition as a social contagion and an attempt to erase butch women.[32]

    In 2017, Ruth Hunt, a butch lesbian and then-CEO of the LGBT charity Stonewall, wrote that transphobic groups present the advancement of trans rights as erasing the identities of younger butch lesbians, but argues that this claim is unsubstantiated.[33]

    Writing for The Economist, trans author Charlie Kiss argued that the stereotype of trans men being "lesbians in denial" is "demeaning and wrong"; he said he "could not have tried harder or longer to be a "true lesbian" but that it never felt right.[34][a]

    In relation to transgender women

    The term lesbian erasure has been used by some

    transphobic or "anti-trans" by the organizers of Pride in London,[41][42][43] and by Owl Fisher in The Guardian.[44]

    Many LGBT activists have opposed use of the term lesbian erasure with regard to transgender activism.

    bisexual people in the United Kingdom, 75% had positive views towards transgender people, with 84% of cis lesbians saying that felt positively;[47] these views were markedly more positive than those held by the general public in Britain, where 39% said they held positive views of trans people.[48]

    Shannon Keating of BuzzFeed argued that "though lesbians are by no means under attack by gains in trans acceptance, it's true that American attitudes about gender identity are evolving, which has started to impact the way many of us think about sexual orientation."

    lesbian separatist feminists, being attracted to someone they incorrectly consider a 'man.'" Holleb added that transgender people "are acutely aware of the biological differences between [trans] and cis people" and that "trans people aren't trying to 'erase' biological differences, we're trying to secure our basic rights, and highlight shared struggles when we talk about activism and justice."[50]

    Discord between

    Dyke March, the group The Lesbians Collective was told to exclude certain symbols such as "XX" which march organizers said were exclusionary of trans women.[52] Such disputes have also occurred in the United States and in LGBT communities across the United Kingdom.[39][38][40]

    See also

    Notes

    1. ^ The idea that most or all transgender men are solely attracted to women is considered outdated and a stereotype. A 2023 USA-based study found that, while 28.3% of trans men did identify as straight, a further 23.9% identified as bisexual/pansexual, 15.8% identified as gay, 15% identified as queer and the remaining 17% identified as other sexualities.[35]

    References

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    4. ^ Brownworth, Victoria A. (October 19, 2018). "Lesbian Erasure". Echo Magazine. Archived from the original on February 22, 2021. Retrieved July 28, 2019.
    5. ^ Heuchan, Claire (July 9, 2018). "We Need to Talk About Misogyny and the LGBT Community's Erasure of Black Lesbian History". AfterEllen. Archived from the original on July 9, 2018. Retrieved July 28, 2019.
    6. ^ McGrattan, Ciara (March 22, 2016). "The hidden histories of queer women of the Easter Rising". Gay Community News.
    7. ^ Rogers, Rosemary (May 23, 2015). "Wild Irish Women: Elizabeth O'Farrell – A Fearless Woman". Irish America.
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    9. ^ McGrath, Louisa (November 25, 2015). "It's Time to Acknowledge the Lesbians Who Fought in the Easter Rising (with Podcast)". Dublin Inquirer. Archived from the original on November 2, 2018.
    10. ^ Kelleher, Patrick (April 9, 2023). "How a lesbian couple's contribution to Ireland's Easter Rising was scrubbed from history". PinkNews.
    11. ^ Friess, Steve (December 11, 2015). "The First Openly Gay Person to Win an Election in America Was Not Harvey Milk". Bloomberg News. Retrieved April 3, 2020.
    12. ^ Compton, Julie (April 2, 2020). "Meet the lesbian who made political history years before Harvey Milk". NBC News. Retrieved April 3, 2020.
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    22. ^ Bianco, Marcie (October 6, 2016). "Lesbian culture is being erased because investors think only gay men (and straight people) have money". Quartz. Archived from the original on June 22, 2019. Retrieved June 16, 2019.
    23. ^ Faderman, Lillian (June 8, 2016). "Pioneer: Robin Tyler". The Pride LA. Retrieved October 4, 2019.
    24. ^ Faraone, Juliette (April 4, 2016). "Talk to the Internet: Ashley Obinwanne (Lavender Collective/Lesbians Over Everything)". Screen Queens. Retrieved October 4, 2019.
    25. ^ Morris, Bonnie J. (December 22, 2016). "Dyke Culture and the Disappearing L". Slate. Retrieved September 30, 2019.
    26. ^ * Tyler, Robin (June 5, 2018). "Don't call me 'queer'". Los Angeles Blade. Archived from the original on June 9, 2016. Retrieved October 1, 2019.
    27. ^ Robertson, Julia Diana (October 17, 2017). "Why didn't you say something sooner?—You're Asking The Wrong Question". HuffPost. Retrieved October 8, 2019.
    28. ^ Julia Diana Ghassan Robertson جوليا ديانا [@JuliaDRobertson] (September 23, 2017). "I always appreciate interviews, but it was unethical to change what was said w/out my approval or knowledge. Glad they have a new editor" (Tweet). Retrieved October 8, 2019 – via Twitter.
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    43. ^ Greenfield, Patrick (July 8, 2018). "Pride organisers say sorry after anti-trans group leads march". The Guardian. Archived from the original on June 9, 2019. Retrieved June 20, 2019.
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    46. ^ Lyell, Carrie (July 15, 2019). "Trans people aren't 'erasing' lesbians like me – I'll fight for equality standing side-by-side with them". The Independent. Archived from the original on June 14, 2022. Retrieved November 2, 2019.
    47. ^ "What do lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Britons think the British public thinks of them?". YouGov. August 11, 2023. Archived from the original on August 12, 2023. Cisgender lesbians and bisexual women in particular are likely to have positive feelings towards trans people, at 84, including 66-68% who say 'very positive.' This mirrors national polling which shows that women are generally more likely to hold pro-trans views than men.
    48. ^ Billson, Chantelle (August 11, 2023). "Growing number of Brits view trans people negatively, YouGov study finds". PinkNews. Archived from the original on August 12, 2023.
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