A day without lesbians is like a day without sunshine.
On lesbian Visibility Week & all my favourite things.
I’ve been a dyke for a decade. Or rather, I’ve been openly a dyke for a decade.
It was only a few weeks ago - sat at a bar reading Homocore: How To Punk A Revolution - An Oral History and cackling openly at the first page - that I realised how much my my sense of humour has been shaped by lesbians. In fact, I would argue that most of my worldview has been shaped by my experience of being a lesbian and knowing other lesbians.
That is not to say there is a universal lesbian experience - far from it. And in fact, I’m not particularly interested in any attempts to rigidly define what lesbianism is or who is welcome in lesbian spaces, not least because it tends to erase significant parts of the lesbian community, which has always included trans, non-binary & gender non-conforming people. To deny that truth is to not know the history.
In the space of ten years, I have gone from being someone too scared to say the word lesbian even in private, still in hushed tone to someone who loudly talks about being a dyke to anyone who will listen. In part, I think I’m trying to make up for a childhood where there simply was no representation even in the media, let alone day-to-day life. People often ask me when I knew I was gay as though it was a given I knew gay people existed.
I was lucky, I guess, that I was an adolescent during the age of Tumblr. Tumblr in the early 2010s was a goldmine of sapphic content and more importantly, for me, self-styled queer agony aunts. They were the people who were able to direct me towards support and resources, help me find the books and films I needed to consume at a time when my schools internet server would not even let you google support services without blocking LGBTQ+ sites for porn.
We always seem to get less than we deserve from the world - facing a horrifying mix of sexism and homophobia. I have been ‘lucky’ and yet the stories I can tell about my experience moving through the world from the time I was still a kid - interacting with industries and sectors still dominated by men - would make your skin crawl. There is something about not our not being available for men’s consumption that the world does not accept and we continue to face the consequences of.
This Lesbian Visibility Week, I wanted to spotlight some of my favourite projects run by, for and about lesbians. Because we have always been here, will always be here and the world is a better place for having us in it.
Dressing Dykes is an incredibly repository of lesbian fashion history created by my friend Eleanor Medhurst. If you want to know about the lesbian history of the colour purple or why all the gays are wearing carabiners, Ellie is your person.
We/Us by Roman Manfredi is an incredible exhibition & oral history project running till June 3rd, showing pictures of working-class butches and studs from across the UK. The exhibition is free to attend - please, please go and see it if you get the chance.
The Dyke Project was set up in response to the creation of a group called The Lesbian Project which explicitly excluded trans people. The Dyke Project is here to show that dykes of all genders are thriving.
Surprisingly few people seem to know about Twenties, a semi-autobiographical show by Lena Waithe. It’s probably the first time I saw a Black, butch woman as the lead in a show where they’re allowed to be a whole person.
My incredible lesbian pal friend Eva Bloom creates incredibly accessible sex education, research & programmes for all sorts of queer and trans people, but especially late bloomers.
Watch Hannah Gadsby’s shows Nanette & Douglas. Nanette made me go and get therapy, and I mean that as a compliment. It was the autistic lesbian representation I never knew I needed.
Maddy Court of
is what those lesbian Tumblr blogs of the 2010s were for me except now I’m apparently a grown up. Buy their book The Ex-Girlfriend of My Ex-Girlfriend Is My Girlfriend for every baby dyke in your life.This piece by Jess Elliot about the way cis lesbians have been used to justify transphobia (by the likes of Julie Bindel and JK Rowling) is incredible. And they’re right - lesbians are thriving.
Some of my favourite books by and about queer women can be found here.
I have lost count of how many times I’ve watched this interview with Lea Delaria over the past seven years. Something about the way lesbians have to use comedy to cope. Maybe that’s the universal experience.
If you want to support me as a young queer autistic writer, you can: