Lesbian book reviews

Now that I am in college, we study history and literature and while we also learn about male classics, since feminism in Europe affects education more than in Russia,we study a lot of female figures as well. And I really couldn't even begin to explain HOW EXCITING IT IS. There were sooo many interesting women through out the history!

For example, on my english literature class we learned about Beatrix Potter. I COULDNT STOP TAKING NOTES,I kept writing down every single word the teacher was saying bc every single fact about her life was MIND blowing!!! SHE WAS SUCH AN INTERESTING WOMAN, SHE LIVED A VERY INTERESTING LIFE,HER CHILDREN TALES ARE MORE THAN JUST TALES AND I CAN RELATE ON A PERSONAL LEVEL TO SO MANY ASPECTS OF HER LIFE!!!

Also, a few days ago I decided to buy "little women" in english. Now I really want to read it. And learn as much facts about the Louisa May Alcott's life as possible! The school aged rebel me couldnt even imagine probably that in 2 years I will be fond of literature,humanities and history to that extent.

For context: I see this every time a small corner of, like, fandom internet wants a pair of female friends in a movie/show to be girlfriends, and I see this when GNC straight/bi women (often radfems but not always) talk about how there’s no representation for them. So often they say things like “let women be friends!” (as if there are more lesbian couples depicted in media than female friendships?) or they complain that unfeminine female characters are “always” lesbians. Often their arguments imply that movies/shows are just brimming with butch lesbians. 

Save the ire for male-dominated Hollywood, save the ire for sexist patriarchal expectations that women must be feminine and that the main goal for women should be to partner with a man – extremely rare lesbian characters aren’t the problem!! 

Additionally, please direct me toward this supposed bevy of representation of butch lesbians because I haven’t found it despite looking for it. Butch lesbian characters are so damn rare, and it’s even more rare to find ones who aren’t demonized or mocked. Most lesbians in media actually are very feminine. Even the few lesbian-focused shows such as The L Word and Lip Service are full of feminine lesbians with only a couple of exceptions. 

Most tomboy and gnc women in media are still straight, but fandoms and fans of the show headcanon them as lesbian or bisexual or whatever. As you said there’s barely any lesbian representation in anything!!

These people could easily just enjoy the content as it is and keep the actual straight characters. They are just getting mad at others for having an interpretation that makes themselves happy, which is really sad.

Dr. Katherine (Kay) Fowler-Billings was an American naturalist and geologist. She is commonly known for being one of the earliest female geologists. In 1926 she dressed as a man to join a geologic expedition. She mapped >500 square miles of the Laramie Mountains alone in 2 Summers. She fundamentally changed our understanding of the Rockies.

I am so, so tired of the constant claims that women’s sexuality is malleable and inclusive and women are turned on by anything and everything, while men’s sexuality is stable and uncomplicated, backed up by bullshit science.

There is always a lot of media flair over the publication of studies supposedly showing evidence that women experience sexual arousal to both men and women regardless of sexual orientation while men only experience sexual arousal to the sex that they report being attracted to. One well-known example is the 2005 study by Meredith Chivers and her colleagues that compared the self-reported sexual preference and the measure of genital arousal (vaginal vasocongestion for women, penile erections for men) of heterosexual women, lesbian women, heterosexual men, and gay men who watched several different videos. The videos depicted one of four scenarios: men having sex with women, men having sex with men, women having sex with women, or a neutral landscape stimulus. Results showed that both heterosexual and lesbian women appeared to be aroused by each type of sexual stimulus, while heterosexual men were most aroused by the female-female sex and gay men were aroused only by the male-male sex.

I’ve seen people bring up these kinds of findings to make some “revealing” statement about female sexual desire.

But the first problem with studies like this is the methods they use to measure female sexual arousal. Blood flow to the vaginal walls is not a reliable measure of female sexual arousal. Even lubrication of the vagina does not denote sexual arousal, as any woman can tell you. Furthermore, the vagina is not the primary center of sexual pleasure for most women–the clitoris is. In fact, one study suggests that clitoral blood volume is a more valid and sensitive measure of female sexual arousal than vaginal vasocongestion. Finally, there is no reason to assume that self-report measures of sexual arousal are less reliable than physiological ones, since the body’s apparent response to a sexual stimulus is not necessarily a reflection of the person’s sexual desire.

Lisa Diamond, the psychologist and sexuality researcher who popularised the notion of sexual fluidity in women, did a 10-year longitudinal study on female sexuality involving 100 participants. She details this research in her book Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire, published in 2008.

At the beginning of the study, women [who identified as lesbian] reported that 90 percent of their sexual contact was pursued with women, but this figure dropped to 74 percent at the ten-year point. Those with the largest changes in behavior were the ones who changed their identities: on average, women who stopped identifying as lesbian reported that their same-sex behavior dropped by about 40 percent over the course of the study, whereas women who stayed lesbian-identified the entire time showed no drop in same-sex behavior at all (averaging 92 percent same-sex sexual contact throughout the study). 

It’s important to remember that here, “lesbian-identified” does not necessarily mean actually lesbian, since a large number of the women initially identified as lesbian despite the label not accurately describing them. Diamond reveals in a later chapter that “only three women reported 100 percent same-sex attractions at every interview.” The women who averaged 92% same-sex sexual contact at the end of the study don’t prove that some lesbians are slightly attracted to men; they prove that there are a lot of Kinsey 5 bisexuals who consider themselves close enough to lesbianism to call themselves lesbians.  

Diamond notes that some of the women identified as lesbian despite acknowledging that they were attracted to both sexes. She cites some of the typical lesbiphobic reasons the bisexual women gave for identifying as lesbian (ie. they felt more “comfortable” with the lesbian label, they thought they’d be more accepted in lesbian communities, etc.).

Other women with nonexclusive attractions would routinely change their identity labels in accordance with their current romantic partner or social network. If they were seriously involved with a woman, they identified as lesbian. If they were seriously involved with a man, they identified as bisexual or heterosexual, all the while acknowledging that they remained attracted to both sexes. “At this point in my life,” a twenty-five-year-old bisexual woman explained, “I’m starting to think about a long-term, permanent partner, so I think if I met somebody and made that kind of lifetime commitment, then I would also be committing to that particular sexuality. But it could go either way, it could be a man or woman.”

So much for bisexuals suffering the terribleness of bisexual erasure from the gay and lesbian communities.

Diamond claims she does not believe that all women are bisexual nor that sexuality can be changed, but her description of the theory of sexual fluidity clearly supports these lesbiphobic ideas.

Does sexual fluidity mean that sexual orientation can be changed? No. It simply means that a woman’s sexual orientation is not the only factor determining her attractions. A predominantly heterosexual woman might, at some point in time, become attracted to a woman, just as a predominantly lesbian woman might at some point become attracted to a man. Despite these experiences, the women’s overall orientation remains the same.

[…]

Couldn’t all individuals be characterized as fluid? Perhaps, though women appear to be more fluid than men. Certainly, few researchers would argue that sexual orientation is the sole factor determining each and every instance of sexual desire and behavior. Human sexual responses have been shown to be somewhat flexible, and thus any individual should be capable of experiencing desires that run counter to his or her overall sexual orientation.

Diamond explicitly says that lesbians can be attracted to men, so there you have it, her sexual fluidity theory is inherently lesbiphobic and has routinely been used to perpetuate the lesbiphobic idea that lesbian women, unlike gay men, are more open to opposite-sex attraction and are never really solid and consistent in their sexuality.

But, as she admits, her own research does not support the idea of greater fluidity in female sexuality, and certainly not in lesbian sexuality.

I found significant shifts toward more nonexclusive sexual behavior in all the other groups as well. Women who identified as unlabeled or bisexual in 1995 showed an average drop of 16 percent in their same-sex sexual contact. The largest changes took place among the women who reidentified as heterosexual by 2005: more than one-third of their sexual partners were women at the beginning of the study, but by 2005 they were sexually active only with men. In contrast, women who were unlabeled or bisexual in 2005 had begun the study pursuing around 55 percent of their sexual contacts with women, but this figure dropped to 35 percent in 2005.

It became clear that the sample could be divided into two groups: (1) lesbians who had been exclusively attracted to and involved with women throughout the study, and who were least likely to change their identities; and (2) everyone else. The other participants reported consistently nonexclusive attractions, increasing other-sex behavior, and were most likely to change their identities. Clearly, the women who were changing identities were not undergoing changes in their orientations. They had been attracted to both women and men all along.

As with interpreting changes in sexual identity, it is helpful to examine which women are changing the most. If we examine correlations between women’s initial percentages of same-sex attraction (in 1995) and the size of their subsequent changes, we find a strikingly consistent pattern: the more same-sex attractions a woman reported in 1995 (and, in fact, throughout the rest of the study as well), the less her attractions changed over time, in either direction. Thus women who reported predominant or near-exclusive attractions to women in 1995 tended to remain pretty much the same. The women with more nonexclusive attractions—those who identified as bisexual or unlabeled—underwent the most sizeable shifts.

[…]    

If we use these changes in attractions to make inferences about changes in sexual orientation, we must conclude that there is not much evidence for change in orientation. The small shifts experienced by lesbians nonetheless kept them in the lesbian range, and even the sizeable shifts experienced by unlabeled and bisexual women kept them in the bisexual range: they almost never jumped to near-exclusive same-sex attractions or plummeted down to near-exclusive other-sex attractions. Note, in particular, that the women who had reidentified as heterosexual by 2005 did not undergo much change either: they had always reported less frequent same-sex attractions than the rest of the sample; they simply came to label and interpret these feelings differently over time.

The “small shifts” experienced by the women who had sex more frequently with women than men actually put them in the bisexual range because bisexuality is nonexclusive. They are simply bisexual women who prefer women.

Unfortunately, there are still a lot of studies aimed at showing how the sexuality of women, particularly sexual minority women, is more fluid than everyone else’s. This is the abstract from a study called “Stability and change in sexual orientation identity over a 10-year period in adulthood” published in 2012.

We examined reports of sexual orientation identity stability and change over a 10-year period drawing on data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS I and II) and tested for three patterns: (1) heterosexual stability, (2) female sexual fluidity, and (3) bisexual fluidity. Fifty-four percent of the 2,560 participants were female and the average age was approximately 47 years. At Wave 1, 2,494 (97.42%) reported a heterosexual identity, 32 (1.25%) a homosexual identity, and 34 (1.33%) a bisexual identity and somewhat more than 2% reported a different sexual orientation identity at Wave 2. Although some support for each hypothesis was found, initial sexual orientation identity interacted with gender to predict a more complex pattern. For the sample as a whole, heterosexuality was the most stable identity. For women, bisexuality and homosexuality were equally unstable and significantly less stable than heterosexuality, suggesting that sexual orientation identity fluidity is a pattern that applies more to sexual minority women than heterosexual women. For men, heterosexuality and homosexuality were both relatively stable compared to bisexuality, which stood out as a particularly unstable identity. This pattern of results was consistent with previous findings and helps to address methodological limitations of earlier research by showing the characteristics of a population-based sample of heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual identified men and women over time.

A few points to make here: (1) Since this study looked at stability and change in sexual orientation identity, not patterns of sexual attraction and behaviour, one cannot draw a conclusion about female sexual fluidity as it pertains to actual sexual orientation; (2) as we’ve already seen many times over, it is unfortunately common for people to identify themselves with a sexual orientation label that does not accurately describe their sexual attraction; and (3) when more reputable studies come out that debunk the idea of greater female sexual fluidity, you don’t often see the media rushing to put that information out there.

Here’s another study that looked at sexual orientation identity called “Prevalence and stability of self-reported sexual orientation identity during young adulthood,” also published in 2012.

Based on data from Wave 3 and Wave 4 from National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (N=12,287), known as Add Health, the majority of young adults identified their sexual orientation as 100% heterosexual. The second largest identity group,‘‘mostly heterosexual,’’was larger than all other nonheterosexual identities combined. Comparing distributions across waves, which were approximately 6 years apart, stability of sexual orientation identity was more common than change. Stability was greatest among men and those identifying as heterosexual. Individuals who identified as 100% homosexual reported nearly the same level of stability as 100% heterosexuals. The bisexual category was the most unstable, with one quarter maintaining that status at Wave 4. Bisexual men who changed their identity distributed themselves among all other categories; among bisexual women, the most common shift was toward mostly heterosexual. Reflecting changes in identity, the proportion of heterosexuals decreased between the two waves.

This study has some issues as well (ie. focus on sexual identity over actual sexual attraction), but here are some additional points: 

(1) The survey included the categories “mostly heterosexual” and “mostly homosexual,” so apparently we are meant to deduce that the category “bisexual” denotes approximately equal attraction to both sexes. This terminology is obviously problematic because that is not what “bisexual” means; bisexuality does not require attraction to men and women to be split 50/50. If you’re attracted to women 99% of the time and men just 1% of the time or vice versa, you’re bisexual. If the researchers wanted to distinguish between the preferences of bisexuals, it would have been wiser to use categories like “bisexual, lean toward women,” “bisexual, lean toward men,” and “bisexual with no particular leaning.” You cannot be “mostly homosexual.” You are either homosexual or you are not. 

(2) With that understood, a bisexual changing his/her sexual identity does not signify that bisexuality is an “unstable” identity. A bisexual could date men and women in equal numbers throughout his/her life or be in a romantic relationship with just one person in his/her whole life and both of those are 100% in the realm of bisexuality.

(3) It is clear that some of the participants in sexual orientation identity studies are in the process of questioning or coming to terms with their sexuality, so a person who makes a drastic shift between two categories (ie. 100% heterosexual to 100% homosexual) is not experiencing “fluidity” but probably just discovering his/her same-sex attraction. The researchers noted that despite “heterosexual” being the most stable category, the number of participants who initially identified as heterosexual decreased between the waves. (It is also possible that some participants may have mistakenly believed themselves to be a particular sexual minority and later identified themselves with a more accurate label.)

(4) Just as in Diamond’s study, participants who were absolutely sure and solid in identifying as 100% homosexual remained 100% homosexual-identified.

This supposed sexual fluidity is not a problem of women having greater difficulty figuring out their sexualities relative to men figuring out theirs, but a problem of countless non-lesbians misdefining lesbianism, mislabeling themselves as lesbian, and misrepresenting lesbian sexuality as fluid (aka, able to expand to accommodate men) because let’s be real, no one is using this misinformation to convince straight women to be more inclusive of women in their sexuality. The myth of female sexual fluidity has negative consequences for lesbians.

I thought of my teenage self as I read Jameela Jamil’s heartfelt coming out as “queer.” Jamil came out in response to criticism of her involvement in a new TV show about voguing. Many people online felt that as a straight woman who isn’t Black or Latino, she has no business judging the competition. So Jamil decided to tell the world she isn’t straight. I have zero interest in litigating whether Jamil’s involvement is appropriate or not, nor am I here to mindread the sincerity of her announcement, though the timing is cynically convenient.

Jamil’s attempts to quell the furor have not been successful. Her coming out has been met with a hefty dose of skepticism. This is not least because she came out not as a lesbian (she’s dating a man, so that would be a stretch, even for Hollywood) or bisexual, but as “queer” — a nebulous term which is so vague it has little meaning or utility in a social or political context.

Ask a dozen people what “queer” means, and you’ll get at least a dozen different answers. It means something different to everybody, and to some people, it means more than one thing. When I was in high school in the early ’00s, “queer” was still a slur. Homophobic boys screamed it at me as I walked down the hallway or drove through town. It was a word of hate. Despite having occasionally used the word myself, I’ve always bristled at it because to me, it is still hate speech. Yet somewhere along the way someone — I’ve yet to figure out who, exactly — “reclaimed” the word and turned it into an affirmation, an identity even. What “queer” is affirming, or who exactly it identifies, has never been clear, though.

For many people, it is simply another way of saying “LGBT.” Even I, as a writer, have referred to “the queer community” to break up the monotony of using the same acronym over and over. Last year them., an LGBTQ publication, asked nine people who identify as queer what it means and, predictably, got nine different answers. Daniel Reynolds, the social media director at The Advocate (America’s premier LGBT magazine), said queer is “a synonym for ‘not straight,’” which seems to be the way most people have used the term. (Is Jamil using it this way? Maybe, maybe not. It’s really not clear from context.)

The problem is others disagree. Kelly Wise, who is a “queer sex therapist,” told Cosmopolitan last year that some straight people can identify as queer simply by virtue of being polyamorous or kinky. “Just because it’s one penis and one vagina, that doesn’t mean that there’s not some queer aspect of you,” Wise said. As Cosmo noted, this isn’t without controversy. “Queer is meaningless,” tweeted the feminist campaigner and writer Julie Bindel. “The only person not included in the alphabet soup these days is the straight white geezer in Essex who washes his car every day, wearing a car coat and combover. I personally find it offensive that lesbian and gay identities have been colonized in this way.”

In December, the former Hollyoaks actor P. J. Brennan informed me that queer “is a political movement, not a sexual identity.” Following an article I wrote for The Independent criticizing those who claim Pete Buttigieg isn’t gay enough (and in which I operated under the assumption that “queer” meant LGBT), Brennan tweeted that “practicing Christian, military service, monogamous marriage…these are just a few qualities of Pete’s that most would argue are the opposite of queer, regardless of the fact that he married a man.” (In these pages, Daniel Summers touched on the same topic.)

If this is the case, “queer” doesn’t mean LGBT, but rather a political philosophy or even affectation which would exclude many LGBT people whose politics are more mainstream or — get your smelling salts ready — conservative. Coming out as “queer,” then, would not be about sexuality or gender identity at all. Rather, being “queer” is about having sufficiently left-wing politics and would, by that definition, exclude some LGBT people but include some straight people who reject what they view as heteronormative social institutions, such as marriage and monogamy. Therefore, by “coming out as queer,” a straight person could ostensibly be coming out as…straight, but left wing. What a time to be alive.

If society cannot agree sufficiently on the definition of a word, the word is meaningless. Coming out as gay is an act of precision. You are telling yourself and the world a specific fact about who you are. “I am gay” means “I am attracted to the same sex.” It’s not ambiguous.

Not so with “queer.” It can mean literally anything, and therefore ultimately means nothing. Saying you are “queer” when you’ve lived a demonstrably straight public life does nothing to tell us who you are, who you love, or anything meaningful about you other than you learned a new word on the internet. It isn’t radical, it isn’t admirable, and it isn’t brave. It’s just confusing.

There is no need to use a word with a cloudy meaning when we have a word with a clear meaning. “Gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” and even the less frequent but increasingly common “pansexual” articulate a fundamental truth about oneself that is unambiguous and easily understood by the rest of society. They cover the full spectrum of human sexuality. Sure, you might be bisexual but more attracted to women than men or vice versa, but that doesn’t make you any less bisexual. Levels of attraction do not discount the fact that there is an attraction to both sexes.

On a personal level, using precise language helps you better interact with others. In some instances — say, in a casual conversation about workplace inclusion — using vague language such as “I’m queer” might be perfectly sufficient. In other instances — say, when hoping someone will ask you out or on a dating app — being specific about your sexual orientation matters more.

On a political level, though, it is vital for organizing around shared struggles. If everyone can be queer, then no one is queer. “Gay,” on the other hand, is exclusive and specific. In a world bent increasingly (and admirably) towards inclusion, some may bristle at the notion of exclusion. Sometimes, though, it is not only okay but vital to have clearly stated boundaries. Saying “I’m gay” establishes who I am open to romantic relationships with while also stating a fact about how I experience the world. In doing so, it allows me to build community with others like me, to stake common ground with them, and form a coherent movement against our shared oppression.

“Queer,” with its overbroad, murky, and endlessly multiple definitions, doesn’t allow for this and is therefore devoid of any meaningful social or political context. If we can’t define what it means to be “queer” — and clearly, there’s a lot of disagreement on the subject — then coming out as “queer” is ultimately not coming out at all. Rather than unequivocally stating your truth, you’ve said nothing.

me at 14: wow, protagonists in media my age! how relateable!

Me at 14: oh protagonists that are 17-20-ish, they’re basically adults, right?

Marnie in Halloweentown: I’m thirteen, okay? I’m practically grown up! I’m certainly old enough to make my own choices – right?

Me at 7: Right!

Me at 13: Right! …Well, okay, maybe not practically grown up, but still, right!

Me at 28:

I absolutely am telling you what your sexuality is because sexuality is not some internal spiritual experience 

If you tell me you’re sexually attracted to the opposite sex, regardless of what you call yourself or that person

You aren’t gay

Lesbians are an easier and immediate target.

Theyre already fetishized and lesbian attractions are treated as nothing serious enough for material legitimacy.

Straight ppl are harder to target for the lot of them bc they arr either straight themselves or internalized homophobic ideas from straights about the nature of sexual orientation and sterotypes about homosexuality.