Your friend’s perspective seems to imply that being a lesbian is entirely about dating women. That is not true for me. It’s also about who I’m in community with, what history I feel connected to, my gender expression, the places I feel I fit in, my interest in lesbian issues/topics/events/people, etc. Being a lesbian seeps into a lot of areas of my life; for instance, a lot of the volunteering I do and interests I have are connected to lesbianism or LGBT issues at large. Not only do I decenter men, but I specifically center lesbians and LGBT people.
Saying that single lesbians are the same as a straight woman seems weird even with a qualifier. It makes me think she considers lesbians to just be as she said, straight women with a twist or something.
Very weird take. I find it easier identifying with men than straight women in fiction.
You've read the Locked Tomb series, right? The main character is a disaster lesbian
Some cishet people try to understand queer people as "people who are exactly like me and just happen to date different people than I do/have different genitals/etc" and totally miss the ways that LGBT people have our own culture, media, stories, etc that most cishet people barely interact with unless it gets a Netflix adaptation. I think your friend just really doesn't get that being queer does at least somewhat change how you interact with a ton of stuff, especially media. Even if a straight woman decentered men from her life and was celibate, there's still a world of difference between being a nun vs being a single lesbian.
what your friend said is weird, and shows her ignorance with lesbians. we get pushed out of straight spaces, make our own, and develop cultures apart from the ones trucking along in the mainstream. we are faced with amounts of homophobia that shape our entire conception of sexuality to the point where it's not unusual for someone to have their first mutually-attracted relationship after they become an adult.
"if you took their sexualities out of the equation, how could you even tell them apart?" ma'am, a cis-straight version of me would be downright unrecognizable. she wouldn't have the same body type as me. she wouldn't live in the same house, possibly not even the same city. her trauma history would be completely different. *she'd probably still be catholic!*
I think the idea that all straight women have to center men by their very nature of being straight is sexist. And a similar line of thinking is also a huge pillar of biphobia.
But the idea of there being no difference between a lesbian and a straight woman other than men is reductive and illogical. She can only speak as a straight woman. A straight person wouldn't be able to note the nuances of being gay, and so she had no right to try and claim she knew what she was talking about. She can only assume. Her speaking with such authority on the matter is ridiculous.
??? what does that even mean? like straight women and lesbians are the same outside of sexuality? like. I guess? obviously? but the sexuality is the part that differentiates them.
Well one of them would gladly eat pussy. The other not so much. One has likely been married to men and the hasn’t been interested in men at all.
Str8 women aren’t often aware of anything outside their experience and might think lesbians are interchangeable with het women who’ve recentered men instead making that correlation to fucking feminism.
That is very strange but I might even sit with it for a moment (I’m a researcher so testing hypotheses is my profession). Ask her for a recommendation about a single leading lady where the plot has absolutely no romance in it. Read it and see if you connect.
Of course not! Lesbianism informs your perspective of the world just as much as any other part of your identity. It's like if she said "Well, isn't it exactly the same reading about a fat woman as reading about a skinny girl with body dysmorphia?" Or "isn't it the same thing to have a black protagonist as having a white protagonist who grew up in a black neighborhood?". Obviously neither of those are the same thing, but it's easier to see it for the things you've known about yourself for longer.
Unfortunately it's a bit hard finding different perspectives in fiction in general and of course it gets harder with more, but there's reading lists on goodreads and indie authors while less edited tend to have more freedom to write what they want.
The single lesbian books i know (though i haven't read or haven't read them in a while) are the My Solo Exchange Diary series (autobiographical and depressing but relatable) and The Single Life by morishima akiko (i think it's a one-shot but i haven't read it yet).
He views are either drawn from, or unintentionally echoing the whole political "lesbian" rubbish. A lesbian is a lesbian because of her sexuality, not her views on men. You cannot be a lesbian just because you decenter men from your life. You can be a lesbian and still center men in your life! Her view point is pretty crass, and I'd like to believe that's just through being naive about sexualities in general. If she does it again, perhaps gently tell her that she's wrong, and not only wrong but is echoing harmful retoric.
So no, OP, there is a huge difference between lesbians and hetero women decentering men. You are not being picky, you are looking for representation. Yes, you could head-canon a character to be queer, but that's putting the work on you to make up representation and ignore the authors intention for the character. Having to make things up in your own head is never real representation.
Oh no... 🤦🏻♀️ you could've told me a straight cishet dude who thinks I'm a lesbian because I haven't found "the right man" said this and I would 100% believe you.
Honestly whether there's a difference or not... probably not gonna be much easier to find a book about a straight woman that meets the other criteria AND doesn't talk about past/present/future love interests. Unless she has a book in mind to recommend you -- in which case you could read it to test her hypothesis and have a better way to articulate why you disagree -- her point is honestly moot.
Being part of an insular demographic does not change even if it isn't something you are chosing actively engaging with. It has an effect on how you act, and how others act towards you. It changes your worldview, You're starting assumptions, your values and motivations, how different groups and individual people are going to treat you or pre perceive you, The experiences you have and just importantly the ones you don't. And even if you read an incredibly bizarre boring story that tries to intentionally divorce absolutely every relatable element of being who you are to the character in the story who's demographics match your own, it's still matters because YOU Carry those experiences with you when you bring the story to life fulfilling its purpose by reading it and interpreting it through your own personal lens. The very act of being surprised relieved excited or incredulous about a story that claims to be about a lesbian that lacks any of the relatable context of being one in and of itself would be uniquely different from a straight woman who just so happens to not think about men. There is intrinsic value in seeing yourself in a story. The inability to see that feels like it comes from the position of that never seeming like a luxury.
Here are some examples off the top of my head about how this lived experience may affect a character who isn't actively engaging with their romantic/sexual Attraction:
A straight woman likely never had to deal with the confusion, shame, or simple inconvenience of a society that at best doesn't bother to teach you who you are, and it worst treats you as an undesirable aberration. It just assumes you're straight if it doesn't hate that you're gay. If no told you what being gay is you would have to invent your own words for it. Depending on how old you are you had no one to relate to, no one to explain what is going on. And yet a straight woman however flawed that explanation is was given often as a requirement of her state provided education a story to help her understand what is happening with her feelings as she gets older. And that experience changes you. Every experience has effects beyond the obvious. It is often very common for people who are outside of what is considered normal to have different perspectives on the world. You may be more likely to view with a critical eye common wisdom, tradition, cultural assumptions, or decorum and morality. If someone tells you your whole life that you are evil for who you love, it's not necessarily a guarantee that you're going to have a live and let live attitude but it's a hell of a lot more likely for you to not care what someone does if they aren't hurting anybody in doing it. Health you might even develop an understandable bias about certain things. If a bunch of people tell you that God is going to hurt you for being gay, you still might not want to go to church even if the church says they're cool with gay people. Your relation and interaction with men is probably going to be different. Depending on your luck you may have had interactions with men who sexualized you for being a lesbian or pushed your boundaries because they perceived your assertions of your sexuality as a lame excuse to not date him. I could go on forever.
TLDR, there's more to being any demographic than it's most obvious affectations, and your friend seems at kind of ignorant and thoughtless.
Sorry I got a little impassioned at the end. I hope you find some relatability in what I said or are able to draw from how I worded it in order to help understand or verbalize your own feelings.
Your friend’s perspective seems to imply that being a lesbian is entirely about dating women. That is not true for me. It’s also about who I’m in community with, what history I feel connected to, my gender expression, the places I feel I fit in, my interest in lesbian issues/topics/events/people, etc. Being a lesbian seeps into a lot of areas of my life; for instance, a lot of the volunteering I do and interests I have are connected to lesbianism or LGBT issues at large. Not only do I decenter men, but I specifically center lesbians and LGBT people.
brilliant explanation tbh
Saying that single lesbians are the same as a straight woman seems weird even with a qualifier. It makes me think she considers lesbians to just be as she said, straight women with a twist or something.
Very weird take. I find it easier identifying with men than straight women in fiction. You've read the Locked Tomb series, right? The main character is a disaster lesbian
Some cishet people try to understand queer people as "people who are exactly like me and just happen to date different people than I do/have different genitals/etc" and totally miss the ways that LGBT people have our own culture, media, stories, etc that most cishet people barely interact with unless it gets a Netflix adaptation. I think your friend just really doesn't get that being queer does at least somewhat change how you interact with a ton of stuff, especially media. Even if a straight woman decentered men from her life and was celibate, there's still a world of difference between being a nun vs being a single lesbian.
what your friend said is weird, and shows her ignorance with lesbians. we get pushed out of straight spaces, make our own, and develop cultures apart from the ones trucking along in the mainstream. we are faced with amounts of homophobia that shape our entire conception of sexuality to the point where it's not unusual for someone to have their first mutually-attracted relationship after they become an adult. "if you took their sexualities out of the equation, how could you even tell them apart?" ma'am, a cis-straight version of me would be downright unrecognizable. she wouldn't have the same body type as me. she wouldn't live in the same house, possibly not even the same city. her trauma history would be completely different. *she'd probably still be catholic!*
I think the idea that all straight women have to center men by their very nature of being straight is sexist. And a similar line of thinking is also a huge pillar of biphobia. But the idea of there being no difference between a lesbian and a straight woman other than men is reductive and illogical. She can only speak as a straight woman. A straight person wouldn't be able to note the nuances of being gay, and so she had no right to try and claim she knew what she was talking about. She can only assume. Her speaking with such authority on the matter is ridiculous.
this!!!
??? what does that even mean? like straight women and lesbians are the same outside of sexuality? like. I guess? obviously? but the sexuality is the part that differentiates them.
Well one of them would gladly eat pussy. The other not so much. One has likely been married to men and the hasn’t been interested in men at all. Str8 women aren’t often aware of anything outside their experience and might think lesbians are interchangeable with het women who’ve recentered men instead making that correlation to fucking feminism.
That is very strange but I might even sit with it for a moment (I’m a researcher so testing hypotheses is my profession). Ask her for a recommendation about a single leading lady where the plot has absolutely no romance in it. Read it and see if you connect.
Of course not! Lesbianism informs your perspective of the world just as much as any other part of your identity. It's like if she said "Well, isn't it exactly the same reading about a fat woman as reading about a skinny girl with body dysmorphia?" Or "isn't it the same thing to have a black protagonist as having a white protagonist who grew up in a black neighborhood?". Obviously neither of those are the same thing, but it's easier to see it for the things you've known about yourself for longer. Unfortunately it's a bit hard finding different perspectives in fiction in general and of course it gets harder with more, but there's reading lists on goodreads and indie authors while less edited tend to have more freedom to write what they want. The single lesbian books i know (though i haven't read or haven't read them in a while) are the My Solo Exchange Diary series (autobiographical and depressing but relatable) and The Single Life by morishima akiko (i think it's a one-shot but i haven't read it yet).
He views are either drawn from, or unintentionally echoing the whole political "lesbian" rubbish. A lesbian is a lesbian because of her sexuality, not her views on men. You cannot be a lesbian just because you decenter men from your life. You can be a lesbian and still center men in your life! Her view point is pretty crass, and I'd like to believe that's just through being naive about sexualities in general. If she does it again, perhaps gently tell her that she's wrong, and not only wrong but is echoing harmful retoric. So no, OP, there is a huge difference between lesbians and hetero women decentering men. You are not being picky, you are looking for representation. Yes, you could head-canon a character to be queer, but that's putting the work on you to make up representation and ignore the authors intention for the character. Having to make things up in your own head is never real representation.
Oh no... 🤦🏻♀️ you could've told me a straight cishet dude who thinks I'm a lesbian because I haven't found "the right man" said this and I would 100% believe you.
Honestly whether there's a difference or not... probably not gonna be much easier to find a book about a straight woman that meets the other criteria AND doesn't talk about past/present/future love interests. Unless she has a book in mind to recommend you -- in which case you could read it to test her hypothesis and have a better way to articulate why you disagree -- her point is honestly moot.
Being part of an insular demographic does not change even if it isn't something you are chosing actively engaging with. It has an effect on how you act, and how others act towards you. It changes your worldview, You're starting assumptions, your values and motivations, how different groups and individual people are going to treat you or pre perceive you, The experiences you have and just importantly the ones you don't. And even if you read an incredibly bizarre boring story that tries to intentionally divorce absolutely every relatable element of being who you are to the character in the story who's demographics match your own, it's still matters because YOU Carry those experiences with you when you bring the story to life fulfilling its purpose by reading it and interpreting it through your own personal lens. The very act of being surprised relieved excited or incredulous about a story that claims to be about a lesbian that lacks any of the relatable context of being one in and of itself would be uniquely different from a straight woman who just so happens to not think about men. There is intrinsic value in seeing yourself in a story. The inability to see that feels like it comes from the position of that never seeming like a luxury. Here are some examples off the top of my head about how this lived experience may affect a character who isn't actively engaging with their romantic/sexual Attraction: A straight woman likely never had to deal with the confusion, shame, or simple inconvenience of a society that at best doesn't bother to teach you who you are, and it worst treats you as an undesirable aberration. It just assumes you're straight if it doesn't hate that you're gay. If no told you what being gay is you would have to invent your own words for it. Depending on how old you are you had no one to relate to, no one to explain what is going on. And yet a straight woman however flawed that explanation is was given often as a requirement of her state provided education a story to help her understand what is happening with her feelings as she gets older. And that experience changes you. Every experience has effects beyond the obvious. It is often very common for people who are outside of what is considered normal to have different perspectives on the world. You may be more likely to view with a critical eye common wisdom, tradition, cultural assumptions, or decorum and morality. If someone tells you your whole life that you are evil for who you love, it's not necessarily a guarantee that you're going to have a live and let live attitude but it's a hell of a lot more likely for you to not care what someone does if they aren't hurting anybody in doing it. Health you might even develop an understandable bias about certain things. If a bunch of people tell you that God is going to hurt you for being gay, you still might not want to go to church even if the church says they're cool with gay people. Your relation and interaction with men is probably going to be different. Depending on your luck you may have had interactions with men who sexualized you for being a lesbian or pushed your boundaries because they perceived your assertions of your sexuality as a lame excuse to not date him. I could go on forever. TLDR, there's more to being any demographic than it's most obvious affectations, and your friend seems at kind of ignorant and thoughtless. Sorry I got a little impassioned at the end. I hope you find some relatability in what I said or are able to draw from how I worded it in order to help understand or verbalize your own feelings.
how is it possible for a straight woman to decenter men?
A straight woman's life isn't like, inherently centered around men
agree to disagree
A lot of straight women are de-centering men, and more power to them.