“Hey, what’s your name?”
I’m in an art gallery alone, sipping coffee when a man, 25 to 30 with a full beard approaches me, a girl of just 16 at the time.
“Um, Katie” I lie, having been taught not to trust strangers let alone strange men.
“You’re really cute, Katie.” It’s August so I’m wearing shorts and a tank top, little makeup, messy hair, an ensemble designed to avoid the Male Gaze. I walk away, ignoring him. Most would interpret this as a sign of my disinterest, but not him. Several minutes later, when I had almost forgotten him a voice from behind startles me
“Hey Katie, you want to get some coffee?”
“I actually have a girlfriend. So, no.” I respond looking around for witnesses in case things take a turn for the worse.
“Really? You’re gay? I never would have guessed; You’re so pretty, though.”
To many this may seem like a benign, normal, well-intentioned interaction. However to many gay women have lived this experience it brings up feelings of isolation and erasure. Feminine lesbians, who may choose to identify as femme or lipstick lesbians, face difficulty from both the larger heteronormative culture and from their own queer counterculture.
In her monumental book, Whipping Girl, Julia Serano describes two types of sexism. Traditional sexism is the straightforward thought that one sex is better than the other; Oppositional sexism stems from thinking that men and women are opposites and the refusal to acknowledge any ambiguity or overlap of these sexes within the natural variation of gender and expression. Much of what we know as homophobia stems from this idea of oppositional sexism. Individuals who cannot understand such natural variation expect that men should marry women and vice versa. Any aberration from these expectations can cause extreme confusion and as a result rude, or even dangerous, behavior.
Not only do we femmes face unwanted romantic and sexual advances from men, but a disproportionate number of these advances come from places of disrespect and fetishization. Because they “pass” as straight, many femmes face similar problems of straight women including cat calling and harassment in the work place. However, they also face invasive questions, rude confrontations like my own, and in developing countries like South Africa corrective rape. Whenever a group of people, like heterosexual men, feels entitlement to an individual's body, the whole culture will have problems. Often, in our culture and many others, men feel entitled to women's sexuality and bodies. If they cannot “have” a woman they at least want to know everything about her sex life, hence the invasive questions like “Who’s the man?” or “would you have a threesome with a man?”. They have not been taught that desire doesn’t and should not equate with entitlement. Yes, women are beautiful, I know, but that does not mean she is obligated to give you anything. Beauty does not exist exclusively for you. It exists for her and whoever she chooses to share it with.
Femmes do tend to be free of some harassment that more masculine, or butch, lesbians face, a fact that has led some to call this "straight passing” a privilege. This “privilege” is, however, a double edged sword. It may mean that feminine gay women are safe from heckling, but it also means they pass invisible and sometimes unwelcome in spaces traditionally reserved for their own people. This phenomenon is precisely what the term "Femme Invisibility" means. It becomes nearly impossible to find dates or even gay friends without resulting to obtuse methods like rainbow paraphernalia or loud declarations. Some gay women who do not fit the stereotypical image of a lesbian are even told they do not belong in queer spaces with comments like “I don’t experiment with straight girls” or “this is supposed to be a gay bar.” However, when one considers the difficulties such women face from men as well as the fact that those within their own community also invalidate the sexuality of their through assumptions it is impossible to really consider it a privilege at all.
There is a strong LGBT+ culture in America; however this subculture is highly regionalized. In some circles, the term Lipstick Lesbian refers to a feminine girl who prefers to date other femmes. However, in such circles the term has slowly become a negative, even derogatory, one because of heterosexual male fantasy, the way lesbian relationships are portrayed in pornography and, to a certain extent, most main stream media. With few exceptions, these actors are heterosexual women. This may be where the false idea that all feminine women are straight originates. I believe, however, that it stems from a place of opositional sexism instead. Those who assume that homosexual relationships must mimic heterosexual ones are constricted by dulaistic, binary thinking regardless of their orientation.
