Lesbian Visibility Quotes

Amazing how eye and skin color come in many shades yet many think sexuality is just gay or straight.

It's not conversion 'therapy;' it's conversion brainwashing.

The less that women are visible as a research subject, the less we are likely to learn about lesbians.

It’s also joy. The joy to be here, to be free and finally able to walk around with pride and dignity as a lesbian woman in the midst of all these life-affirming rainbows, without worrying about who might see and possibly judge me.

To all my friends who constantly talk disparagingly about the supposed 'homosexual lifestyle' and stereotype gay people and the community, I'd like to get this straight. There are essentially two worlds – the 'gay scene' and the gay (or LGBTIQ) community. The 'scene' is like the tip of the iceberg; what is seen by others because it is visible on a street, suburb or pride parade. Like the ninety percent of the submerged iceberg, the community is larger and less visible. It consists of organisations, groups, support networks and also gay and lesbian singles and couples living 'normal' lives in the suburbs. Occasionally there is an overlap but not often. Some live, socialise and work in both. Many never enter each others worlds. The values, lifestyles and culture of these two worlds are as different as Asian culture is to western is to African is to Middle Eastern. Dig down even deeper below the surface and you find it is not a single community but diverse communities and subcultures that are separate but not necessarily divided. The common thing that binds them together is their experience of inequality, discrimination and their desire to make a better world for themselves, others and future generations. If you believe that all gays and lesbians are shallow and obsessed with sex, body image, partying, nightclubs and bars then you are obviously an observer from the outside or mixing in the wrong circles.

For all of you out there, visible & invisible. Closeted or out & proud. Femme & Masc & every glorious stripe on the rainbow in between. You incandescent queens, deliciously undefinable androgynous souls, chivalrous butches, tomboy dykes, drop-dead yet still invisible femmes. You with your flare, your flamboyance, your rugged individuality, your glorious diversity, your insistence on being seen, your quiet but steady presence in the places that matter. You, the cliche and every unexpected exception. The world’s stereotypes brought to blazing life & you who smashes the boxes & changes the paradigms & refuses to be painted into place. You, who knows that queer looks, speaks, sounds & moves through this world in a million different ways. You, the grieving. You the dancing. You, the proud & the humble & the defiant & the free. Whatever label you choose & define for yourself. Whatever identity feels like home to you. However you have come to know & name yourself & your good, good, love. You are my family. I see you.

Woman-identification is a source of energy, a potential springhead of female power, violently curtailed and wasted under the institution of heterosexuality. The denial of reality and visibility to women’s passion for women, women’s choice of women as allies, life companions, and community; the forcing of such relationships into dissimulation and their disintegration under intense pressure, have meant an incalculable loss to the power of all women to change the social relations of the sexes to liberate ourselves and each other. The lie of compulsory female heterosexuality today admits not just feminist scholarship, but every profession, every reference work, every curriculum, every organizing attempt, every relationship or conversation over which it hovers. It creates, specifically, a profound falseness, hypocrisy, and hysteria in the heterosexual dialogue, for every heterosexual relationship is lived in the queasy strobe-light of that lie. However we choose to identify ourselves, however we find ourselves labeled, it flickers across and distorts our lives.

Doctors at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions have stated, “[F]emale- to-male transsexuals appear to be individuals who are fundamentally homophilic but cannot consciously accept their sexual orientation” (Fagan, Schmidt, and Wise, 1994). I can see it now: in a clinical setting, a transman desperate to be allowed to transition tries to express his “normal” sexual- ity by asserting his attraction to women and denying that he is a lesbian. Yes, he’s telling the truth from the perspective of his gender identity. But what the doctors hear is filtered through their own belief that the body tells us who we are, and this transman in front of them wants to change his body so he can change the abhorrent nature of his lesbian sexuality. These clinicians don’t understand that it isn’t necessarily his sexuality that is abhorrent to him. Even if this patient fell in love with a man, it wouldn’t necessarily change his relationship to his own body: in his own self-per- ception he might then be homosexual after all, even if his body were still female and the body of his partner were male. That wouldn’t necessarily change his need to transition.

What the doctors hear is filtered through their own belief that the body tells us who we are, and this transman in front of them wants to change his body so he can change the abhorrent nature of his lesbian sexuality. These clinicians don’t understand that it isn’t necessarily his sexuality that is abhorrent to him. Even if this patient fell in love with a man, it wouldn’t necessarily change his relationship to his own body: in his own self-per- ception he might then be homosexual after all, even if his body were still female and the body of his partner were male. That wouldn’t necessarily change his need to transition.

What the doctors hear is filtered through their own belief that the body tells us who we are, and this transman in front of them wants to change his body so he can change the abhorrent nature of his lesbian sexuality. These clinicians don’t understand that it isn’t necessarily his sexuality that is abhorrent to him. Even if this patient fell in love with a man, it wouldn’t necessarily change his relationship to his own body: in his own self-perception he might then be homosexual after all, even if his body were still female and the body of his partner were male. That wouldn’t necessarily change his need to transition.

Visible queerness was okay if it wasn't for queer women. One thing that became pretty clear to me was that lesbianism was for men.

Queerness may be at its most visible when it defines romantic love, but it is also inscribed in our broader communities. Friendship is resistance to Gayle Rubin’s traffic in women and the very structures that built this system of traffic.

I look down, worried something is showing after all, but if it wasn't for the incongruous absence of sensation on my left side, I wouldn't know. I look back up at her, taking a step closer because I kind of want to take a step back, and you can’t let that show. "What?" She tenses, even though I’m not even remotely close enough to, say, hit her. "I... I thought you were white." I snort, too relieved to take offense. "I'm adopted. Not my biggest problem at the moment." She smiles at me, looking a little relieved herself. "It just... it seemed a bit too... British, I guess." And it's then that I notice the slight twinge of her accent. “I am British. I was born here.” Her own skin is a light chocolate brown, light enough that it’s perfectly visible when she blushes. She looks so adorable that I almost resist, but not quite. “You have anything against Britishness?” I ask, coming to lean against the doorway on my good side, relieving the weight I have to put on the leg. “No!” she assures me. “No, it’s…” Her hands flutter nervously in front of her, like she hopes to pluck the words out of the air. “I just worry. Some people are weird about it. About me. Especially with the tutoring.

Most visibly and politically effectual were the twelve large-scale photographs by Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin (b. 1961) forming the exhibition Ecce Homo (1998). The photographs depict classical situations in the life of Christ, but they are staged in contemporary settings with obviously gay and lesbian models – naked, in leather gear, transvestites, HIV-positive, etc...

What the doctors hear is filtered through their own belief that the body tells us who we are, and this transman in front of them wants to change his body so he can change the abhorrent nature of his lesbian sexuality. These clinicians don’t understand that it isn’t necessarily his sexuality that is abhorrent to him. Even if this patient fell in love with a man, it wouldn’t necessarily change his relationship to his own body: in his own self-perception he might then be homosexual after all, even if his body were still female and the body of his partner were male. That wouldn’t necessarily change his need to transition.

In that moment, just before expertly wiping my browser history, I felt less alone.

Having visibility – and real-life role models – really matters.

It is important for LGBTQIA+ folks, especially youth, to have queer role models. Visibility normalizes queerness, decreases societal stigma, and makes youth safer.