So I'm a Lesbian...Apparently
Men don't need to know how I define my sexuality - they've done it for me
Apparently, I’m a lesbian now. Men keep telling me so when they hear that I cannot maintain my mental health at this time if I continue to date men. That the abuse I have suffered at the hands of men has so affected me that I don’t currently feel capable of having sexual or romantic feelings for them.
They do not seem concerned by this. They express no curiosity about my pain.
Instead, they are quick to tell me I am a lesbian and scold me for not being more transparent about that fact.
Am I?
They tell me a woman who isn’t attracted to men is a lesbian. That I should know this.
They say the word lesbian like a slur. Like it’s something to be ashamed of - but not because it’s deviant. Because it’s something I did to purposefully hurt them.
They clearly see my sexuality as existing either in service to them…or not. It doesn’t matter to them how I define my sexuality. I am either potential pussy (straight) or of no use to them (lesbian). It’s not possible to them that I might be bi or pan because these identities cannot be defined by my proximity to their sexual fulfillment.
And should I be more transparent about how I identify? Should I replace the pronouns in my bio with my sexual orientation? Do I need to make sure every man I meet knows I’m not straight so he doesn’t waste his precious time greeting or having a conversation with a woman who might never fuck him?
Y.L. Wolfe (she/they/lesbian).
How’s that?
A friend’s boyfriend once heard me talking about a guy I had a crush on and interrupted our conversation to say he was shocked. He had assumed I was a lesbian.
Why would he have assumed that? I asked him, curious.
“Because you’ve been single for a while,” he said. “I just assumed you don’t like men.”
Don’t like men? Did he mean sexually or philosophically? I honestly couldn’t tell. And frankly, in that moment, I lost interest in his thought process and decided not to question the matter further.
I suddenly didn’t care that he assumed that a woman without a man must be a lesbian. That he couldn’t imagine that perhaps I just hadn’t met the right person yet. That perhaps that right person might be any gender for someone with my sexual orientation.
In his eyes, I could only be straight or lesbian.
And if those are my only two options, yes, I’ll take lesbian.
I am very careful about how I talk about my work in conversation with men. I tell them I write “political commentary.” I find they have a wildly different reaction to that than to the statement, “I write about feminism.”
The latter description almost always immediately (and bizarrely) segues into a discussion about my sexuality. “Oh, you’re a lesbian?”
Actually, I’ve learned that many men aren’t talking about sexuality at all when they bring the L-word into the discussion. They’ve been taught to conflate the concepts of “feminist,” “lesbian,” and “misandry.” That’s right, misandry. That’s an important factor here.
When men ask me if I’m a lesbian, they aren’t actually interested in who I sleep with. They are following the presumptions they’ve been taught to make - that a feminist hates men and therefore must be a lesbian.
They’re scoping out what they perceive to be an enemy.
A feminist, like a lesbian, is of no use to a man invested in patriarchy. If we don’t exist in service to their sexuality, the only way they can define our existence is to label us as someone who hates men.
Synonyms of misandrist: feminist, lesbian.
I don’t shave my armpits, and often skip my legs, too. Lesbian.
Lesbian, like an accusation, because how dare you refuse to conform to the beauty standards men have been programmed to expect from women? How dare you not make yourself as desirable as possible to as many men as possible by meeting this bare minimum?
