Let's Go Lesbians!!!!!
Finally—my Billy Eichner moment
Back in March, we talked about how the pandemic actually offered many people the privacy to question and experiment with their gender and gender expression.
What if I told you the girlies were doing the same with their sexuality?
According to a February article from the BBC,
Dating app Bumble surveyed more than 4,000 users in the US, UK, Ireland, Australia and Canada in August 2020 (data reviewed by BBC Worklife), and 21% said they were planning to “express their sexuality differently… compared to a year ago.” Another Bumble survey showed 14% shifted their sexual desires during the pandemic, opting, for example, for same sex-relationships when they’d previously only been with those of another gender (X).
The BBC also reported back in June 2021 that women tend to be more sexually fluid than men.1 And, if we’ll recall from our rusty trusty 2021 Gallup survey, the number of Americans who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community is steadily on the rise. Maybe Lizzo was right… maybe everybody is gay…
But what does that all mean for art and media and, I guess kind of importantly, society at large? Now that there are more lesbians, is there enough queer content to go around? Is there anything lesbophobic in our history we need to reckon with?? Do we still have to talk to and about men???? (The answers: who’s to say, obviously, and unfortunately.)
This week, I talked with noted lesbian Skylar Corby and expanded on a few of our past discussions here at E4P: we looked specifically at lesbian representation in media (or lack thereof), the impact of the m*le g*ze even when you’re not gazing back at men, and what she wants to see more and less from the art she consumes.
Skylar Corby is a law student and Virgo with an affinity for poetry, interior design and being right all the time. Her hobbies include oversharing on Close Friends and being queer, both in the literal and academic sense. She lives in New York City, where she frequently eats at overpriced restaurants she chose mostly because of their trendy light fixtures.
Skylar sidebar: In many of my answers I broadly refer to lesbians as “women”—I’d like to note that there are many non-binary lesbians who have experienced the same, if not heightened, discrimination, and should be included as part of all of my answers and the larger conversation at hand.
Lesbians? In MY Newsletter??
This week, I started in with my toughest question yet:
Emily: Lesbians?
Skylar: Yes! Always.
Well, great! Now that that’s settled:
Emily: How does lesbian representation relate to LGBTQ+ representation as a whole?
Skylar: Lesbian representation is as vital as representation of every other queer identity, though it’s often not emphasized in the same way.2 In the past few years, we have seen a rise in gay male representation, especially in streaming shows and movies. There are often lesbians in this content, though it’s normally as a side character or the wise, responsible “mother” figure.
I don’t want to discount these, because those pieces of media are just as necessary. But it can be frustrating to be relegated off to the side so often.
Emily: What does lesbian representation in media look like, and does it more or less accurately portray the community?
Skylar: This is a complicated question, in that I think if you look hard enough you can find a good amount of representation. Low-budget indie films, a streaming show that most people have never heard of (that probably got canceled anyway), definitely a lot on social media with TikTok and YouTube—all of these are out there for the taking, so to speak.
What we mainly lack, in my opinion, is mainstream representation, meaning something that really explodes with popularity and gets its heyday on Twitter and with critics. We have been fortunate to have shows like The L-Word, but there aren’t many like it and, if we’re honest, not many people are watching and talking about that either.
I think outside of that, we have a lot of media similar to Blue is the Warmest Color which is a film that only serves to fetishize lesbian relationships for men as some sort of sexual fantasy (and that’s outside of the fact that that film specifically was wrought with issues with the male directors sexually harassing the actresses to the point of abuse).
In short, we rarely see the sort of normal, everyday lesbian relationships in media that exist in abundance in real life. I often have found that queer media as a whole has to be exceptional, or high art to just be allowed to exist. When do we get the stupid lesbian rom-coms that don’t have to speak to any larger issues or big conceptual idea? We should be allowed to have regular, fun content that we see ourselves in.
Also, though, the bits of actually well-made AND ethically-made lesbian media that have become popular in the mainstream (see: “San Junipero”) often just becomes a scapegoat in larger conversations about there not being enough representation which gets frustrating, because, as I have said, lesbianism is more than “San Junipero!” It’s multifaceted and complex and beautiful in ways that we just don’t see that often.
For those of us who did not reach the end of Netflix during the first few months of the pandemic (or are just homophobic because it came out in 2016), “San Junipero” is an episode of the anthology Black Mirror in which a lesbian couple lives happily ever after.3 Between being part of a mainstream streaming show and its defiance of the popular ending for queer art known as the "Bury Your Gays" trope, “San Junipero” immediately became a defining piece of lesbian media.
But one 60-minute Emmy Award-winning short film can’t solve the lesbian representation problem on our hands (duh). Even without killing off one or both of the episode’s queer leads, “San Junipero” still represents two major representation issues. For one thing, the show takes place in a sci-fi-esque universe instead of our very real, lesbian-filled reality.
And for another, it was written by a man!!!!
Which brings us to the elephant(’s dick) in the room:
Emily: How would you describe how lesbians have been perceived in media and throughout history? Is that accurate?
Skylar: It’s no secret to most people aware of queer issues that the primary lesbian representation in media we got until maybe 10 years ago was conceptualized and created to serve the sexual interest of men as a fantasy—simply a more creative form of porn, frankly.
This is all borne from the idea that women can’t possibly exist without men being somehow involved, and they especially can’t form their own relationships with each other. God forbid we be able to live a life without men at the focal point (a reminder that all homophobia on both ends is just rebranded misogyny <3).
Lesbian relationships are often not seen as valid at all and until fairly recently in history—and still now, in many places—they were seen as an extracurricular activity for women, not as whole, real, and committed partnerships. That invalidation has, in some cases, protected lesbians and queer women from the sort of violent homophobia often associated with gay men in history, but has caused all sorts of other problems altogether.4
Even in a piece about lesbians, we’re going to have to talk about men.
The M-Word
A couple of weeks ago, we looked at the Lavender Scare and I noted how even though the State Department denied the employment of Communists, they announced that they had “found and fired a number of potential security risks, including 91 people they believed to be homosexuals” in 1950.
Of those fired, only two were lesbians.
David K. Johnson, the preeminent scholar of the Lavender Scare, wrote in his book that “lesbians were at less risk of persecution than gay men because ‘lesbians have traditionally had less access to public space than men and therefore were less vulnerable to arrest and prosecution for their homosexuality.’“
Ironically enough, the primary thing that has offered straight-passing queer women protection is misogyny. Throughout modern history, men who were thought to be gay were those who were more effeminate, and effeminate was always synonymous with weak and women. (Hate me all you want but the line that encapsulates this thinking that always comes to mind for me is from a 2008 interview with Roger Stone: Zoom penis guy Jeffrey Toobin5 asked Stone to speak to rumors about his long-dead mentor Roy Cohn being gay, and Stone replies, “‘Roy was not gay… He was a man who liked having sex with men. Gays were weak, effeminate.’”)
But if you were looking to out those who acted like a woman, how would you spot a lesbian? Don’t worry; homophobes think of everything. Their theory was if a woman was too successful outside the home, too focused on her career to care about men and children well, then, there must be something wrong with her!!! How could she not fall in love with all these men????
In her book, The Straight State, Princeton professor and historian Margot Canaday analyzed federal regulation of homosexuality in America. Canaday’s discussion of women in the military during and after World War II offers the perfect example of how lesbians have managed to outsmart homophobes and their policies to hide safely in plain sight throughout history. She writes that “because they were seen as choosing the military (as opposed to marriage) for a career, [female] soldiers were automatically suspect.”
Many women who worked throughout military forces definitely before WWII and often after learned that if they were too ambitious or moved up too quickly in their ranks for doing a good job, they were instantly labeled lesbians… in an effort to separate themselves from the negative imagery of lesbianism (even if they themselves were gay), many women entering the armed forces as a full-time career began to “stop saying, as their counterparts had during World War II, that female personnel could ‘replace’ men, and instead talk about how well female soldiers ‘complemented’ male personnel.”
This acceptance of traditional gender roles allowed the women and their actions to be less scrutinized as many earlier “suspect” soldiers had been.6
Survival for women, it seems, has always been reliant on our submission to men.
We’ve talked here before about the effects the male gaze has on women’s existence and how it weasels its way into everything, creating an omnipresent Big Brother energy in which we are always conscious of being watched by men. (Men—if you think that’s dramatic, imagine how tired we are.) But the origins of discourse pertaining to the male gaze comes from the art world so it only makes sense to turn the lens back around and apply it to our discussion re: representation.
Although first, I had to ask:
Emily: Are you more male gaze or male gays?
Skylar: Well, male gays, obviously. Look at my friends! Plus, I’m trying to entirely reject the male gaze as a force in my life, though it may never be possible.
Emily: What is your relationship with the male gaze as someone who is not attracted to men?
Skylar: It’s… complicated.
The way that I experience the world and even talk and communicate with men, all feels different because there isn’t really a part of me that cares about what they think of me outside of my personal impulse to want people to like me (which should be a conversation with my therapist).
All of that said, I’m still a femme-presenting woman who was brought up and socialized in a very heteronormative environment that highly valued the thoughts and feelings of the men both directly around me and just in the world generally. I participated in the Edward vs. Jacob debates and had male “crushes”—and was also proxy to all of these things with my primarily straight friends. I wasn’t out to most people until college, so these experiences defined my upbringing and teenage years; I am still working through the feelings that I should present in a way that satisfies men.
At the end of the day, most of my friends are not queer women (and certainly not lesbians) so when I go out, I compare myself to other, presumably straight women.
That means that even though I don’t really want male attention, that is the currency that I’ve learned to accept as a means of knowing if I’m attractive.
As a societal rule, we value the way men see us in such a way that, as women, if men don’t hit on us but do hit on our friends, it must mean we’re less attractive. I truly hate it and am working through it, but… it’d be silly to lie as if I’m immune to those feelings. I’m certainly not.
Emily: What is your relationship with cis men in general as someone who is not attracted to them?
Skylar: For the first time in my life, I have almost as many male friends as I do female friends. That’s weird for me, frankly, because I have always been a “girl’s girl.” It’s pertinent to note the large majority of them are gay, which absolutely does change the way I view the relationship (and the way it operates), but the point still stands.
I am learning to redefine my view of men outside of them as a proxy for how I view my own self, which has honestly allowed for some great friendships—even with straight, cis men. I’m really grateful for that journey because it’s invited some really special people into my life, especially here in the city.
We here at Emily For President are steadfast supporters of women’s rights and wrongs—most of the time. Women should not ever be afraid to gaslight a man, catfish a cheater, or sign a misogynist up for the Jehovah’s Witness mailing list. But ladies, we have to stop doing men’s oppression for them.
You’ll all be unsurprised to hear that cishet white women throughout history were, in addition to being racist and transphobic, often extremely homophobic against fellow feminists who were also lesbians. While I guess male validation might feel good for some—the way caffeine or melatonin or cocaine does until your tolerance builds—is it worth it for us to become our movements’ own worst enemies? Isn’t internalized homophobia just another tool of the patriarchy? Aren’t men inside of enough?? Get them out of your head!!!
But because women can be villains, too, I had to ask:
Emily: What effect or effects does internalized homophobia in straight women have on the creation and/or success of lesbian media?
Skylar: I don’t want to make big generalizations but sometimes I’m more nervous to come out to straight women than to straight men (I’m mentally hiding inside of a cabinet writing that sentence).
A lot of the reason for that is that some straight women often don’t know what to do with female attraction—it makes them uncomfortable in some way. Maybe that’s because they assume I’m attracted to them (which I rarely am), or because they think they can’t relate to me (see: women operate under the male gaze all the time, as I noted above, and maybe do not know how to interact with someone who doesn’t approximate their being in terms of male involvement).
In a way, I understand it—I didn’t even consider my own attraction to women in a serious and valid way until I was like, 16, and it still took me way longer to actually be open about it. The stereotypes about all lesbians being hairy, grimy hippies don’t help either, even though people who identify with that are very valid, of course. But what it means is that straight women do not generally have any kind of desire to watch or engage with content that prioritizes lesbians.
In terms of queer content, most straight women tend to strongly gravitate towards gay male media, probably because they better understand male attraction (this has become its own fetishization, but more on that another time).
An Art Hoe Never Gets Cold
In an attempt to pick the mood back up after talks of internalized homophobia and the patriarchy (do I know how to read a room or what?), let’s pivot the conversation to look art squarely in the eye:
Emily: What is your relationship with art and media in general?
Skylar: Without being too crude, I’m a whore for media and art.
I’m obsessed with novels, films, TV, poetry, visual art, fashion, music and anything else even kind of adjacent to it (like, I have a weird obsession with good furniture). That’s really the crux of why I care so much about representation—I think good media/art can be life-altering and world-changing and all of the other dramatic adjectives.
Like it or not, we live in a world totally inundated with capital C Content and it only continues to increase by the minute. Some of it is garbage, sure, but a lot of it has so much to offer the world. That may just mean providing a laugh to someone having a bad day, but it could also mean something bigger to some little kid who sees what they could be one day, in an ideal world.
If we invest in content through that lens, the media landscape could change for the better.
Emily: You've mentioned before that lesbian media doesn't receive mass media attention. Do you think increasing its popularity in pop culture is something that would be more helpful or harmful to the community?
Skylar: I think like any other type of representation, it’s always a double-edged sword. As a general rule, I think the pros of representation generally outweigh the cons, because we as people often need some visual help with contextualizing and humanizing people with identities we may not understand. It’s a lot harder to hate people or characters up close. If we can show people that lesbians (or gay men or trans women) are just like everyone else, we wind up in a kinder, more accepting world.
All of that being said, I have been called a dyke on the street while holding a girl’s hand, so the discrimination is always there and will inevitably happen with any lesbian media on a larger scale. I just think that maybe it also can be worth it, as long as it’s a true, accurate portrayal that lends itself to increasing empathy and understanding.
We know the impact seeing yourself authentically on screen can have, as well as the many shapes that can take given our intersecting identities.
With that in mind, I asked Skylar:
Emily: Do you feel like you see yourself in the art and media you consume? Do you see some of your identities represented more than others?
Skylar: Sometimes, yes, I really do. I haven’t found a ton of lesbian media that I wholly identify with, probably just because I haven’t spent enough time looking for it. But I see myself in all kinds of people—I see myself as Elio in Call Me by Your Name, in Fleabag in her conversations with The Priest, in Molly in Booksmart. Sometimes I see myself in one of the bakers on The Great British Bake Off, or any of the nine million reality competition shows I watch.
I absolutely see myself the most in characters who are women, especially those that are just trying to figure everything out. It’s a comfort to know that even fictional characters have some of my attributes. It’s even more a comfort when I (albeit rarely) find queer women characters who are just trying to navigate the big, bad world.
Emily: What do you want to see more or less of from the media you consume?
Skylar: I always want to see more real, ordinary life. Maybe people find that boring, but sometimes I want media to placate and comfort me more than challenge me, so like, more lesbians being married with dogs, I guess? I want more media about women that allows them to be really, really angry at people. I want more shows written by poets. I want a spin-off of Gilmore Girls but make it gay.
I’d like less rape apology, less violence towards women and queer people and less centralizing men. I’d like less TV about real estate, and less movies about war with five-minute bomb sequences. Less privileged people coasting.
Emily: What do you want to see more or less of from lesbian media/ representations?
Skylar: I want more lesbian media that’s just cute and doesn’t centrally feature coming out. I want more lesbian horror, rom-coms, and silly coming of age flicks. I want more shows and films that don’t seek to challenge or examine lesbianism, but instead just embrace it. More lesbians on dating apps. I’d like to see a character go through what I’m going through trying to find a committed relationship in New York City, which feels like an obstacle course I’ll literally never get out of.
I want LESS PERIOD LESBIAN MOVIES. Why are there so many? Please, I love Portrait of a Lady on Fire as much as the next person but there’s more out there! Contrary to what filmmakers apparently believe, there are also lesbians right now in 2022!
Otherwise, though, we don’t have enough lesbian representation for me to want less of any form of it… unless it’s made for the interest of men.
The past few weeks here at E4P have been a little doom and gloom: monkeypox, Trump never getting his comeuppance, influencers. Let’s end this week on a high note, shall we?
Emily: In your opinion, who is the #1 lesbian icon?
Skylar: Susan Sontag or Kristen Stewart. Susan changed the queer landscape, but Kristen Stewart is really, really hot. Equally important, in my opinion.
So many thank you’s to Skylar for answering all these questions so brilliantly and earnestly, but also for being a true E4P girlie!!!!!
“In 2019, 65% of women reported only being attracted to men, a notable decrease from 77% in 2011.”
Skylar sidebar x2: I do want to note that trans representation still falls far behind and is equally, if not more, important.
In a simulated reality, but still!!!
Skylar sidebar x3: Small note here that there has, and continues to be, a threat of physical violence towards queer women.
No one is safe here at E4P. All of your scandals are copy!!!
A sampling from a college paper written by yours truly in response to Canaday’s book.