i wish everyone involved in discourse understood that lesbian communities & culture have never been cleanly separate from gender deviance. this is true in ways that dont fit into the now-popular, impossibly clean sexologist definition of lesbian as "woman only attracted to women"
i always think of talking to my academic advisor about her lesbian parents, in which she told me how one of them "would, if she were coming out today, probably be called a trans man"
i think about lesbian-feminist monique wittig, who wrote "lesbians are not women"
i think about lesbian-feminist monique wittig, who wrote "lesbians are not women"
i think about bo brown, lesbian and "gentleman bank robber" of the revolutionary socialist, anti-racist group the george jackson brigade (pictured center) whose gender would likely be understood very differently now! 
i think about the fact that "lesbian" is a very modern term & many of the "romantic friends" (who second-wave feminist lesbians wanted to claim as lesbian icons while solidifying & popularizing lesbian identity) actively rejected attempts to put the label "lesbian" on them!
[cw food] (if you want to read about that i recommend ch. 8, p. 133-150 of rebecca alpert's "like bread on the seder plate: jewish lesbians and the transformation of tradition", ch. title "modern texts: lesbians as gender nonconformists")
(also, lillian faderman's "odd girls and twilight lovers: a history of lesbian life in twentieth century america")
"lesbian" is not an essential, clearly definable, or historically consistent identity. most early attempts to make it one were by creepy sexologist doctors who wanted to study and categorize lesbians!
& we don't need it to be one! part of the radical potential of lgbtq+ communities is that we blur and destroy such boundaries. when we replicate the idea of essential, clean differences, we also replicate the idea that such artificial divisions of human behavior are 'natural.'
much of the material conditions that gave rise to early lesbian culture no longer exist. rarely do lesbian relationships take the form of "attending the local lesbian bar to engage in butch/femme roleplay where the butch courts the femme and then if a relationship forms the
the femme becomes the wage-earner for the couple because a butch who does not pass as a man cannot get hired"
and yet, we inherit this legacy. we're allowed! we don't have to be part of an essential, timeless, unchanging role. we just need to respect our history & each other.
and yet, we inherit this legacy. we're allowed! we don't have to be part of an essential, timeless, unchanging role. we just need to respect our history & each other.
someday, hopefully, i'll get around to the role of daughters of bilitis (earliest lesbian advocacy group who both did important work and who actively tried to sever lesbians from butch/femme history) and later radfems & lezseps in the process of transforming these understandings
in the mean time read lesbian history (a few different books in this thread)
read lesbian history
read lesbian history
gonna link up this thread too because i think the (in context) charlotte wolff quote provides a lot of important perspective for understanding how complicated this is and the issues with projecting essential categories
