In May, I was followed and harassed with my partner in daylight on the busy Royal Mile. We were not assaulted, as we could take refuge in a pub, but that was my first encounter with the violent impact of the lesbophobic words and sentiment I have been hearing since I came out at the age of 14. Whether the man followed us because we were together, or as part of a larger epidemic of violence and harassment towards women we did not know. We could speculate but, at the end of the day, as lesbians, our oppression will always be due to both. Years previously, a man filmed me kissing a girl at a party, declaring to his friends that he was “saving this for later.” His sexual harassment was a result of homophobia, but mainly by the misogynistic notion that he was entitled to my body as an object. Lesbians exist at a crossroads between homophobia and misogyny, challenging societal norms at their cores, but overall, it is misogyny which primarily leads to the consistent silencing and violence against lesbians.
Violence and harassment of lesbians is prevalent, yet underreported. From a London bus, to the streets of New York, to South America, violence is globally pervasive, so much so that a group of activists in Chile coined the term “lesbocide” to describe the deliberate killing of lesbians. But it is not that discrimination only takes the form of killing; lesbocide begins with words. Violence begins with harassment; it begins when men harass women for kissing their partners in public, an experience shared by activist Julie Bindel and myself on multiple occasions. It begins when gay men at Manchester Pride in 2018 shouted for lesbians to be dragged off by their “saggy tits,” but, most importantly, it begins with the patriarchy.
The very existence of lesbians challenges the fundamental notion of patriarchy, that men are central. Ethan Burger describes how lesbians occupy a unique space in the patriarchal paradigm. Patriarchy classifies “women” not as an autonomous subject, but as a passive object, only to be defined in relation to (particularly in heterosexual relation to) men. Therefore, lesbians, who by their pure nature, de-centre men, are impossible to define. Because the existence of lesbians disproves the central thesis of patriarchy, patriarchy therefore tries to disprove our existence. There are many attempts to recentre men within lesbian relationships. Through, for instance, oversexualisation and pornographication, patriarchal society attempts to view our relationships as something for male pleasure. It is from this idea that many lesbians are harassed for kissing women in nightclubs; our existence, for many men, is reduced to a pornographic category. Another key area is the attempts to classify lesbian relationships according to heterosexual roles. Asking “who is the man,” or questioning the validity of lesbian sex stems from the patriarchal centralisation of men within relationships.
The artificial binary of gender roles simply is in cognitive dissonance with the existence of lesbian, and this causes violent reactions from those who uphold this gender paradigm. It is not purely homophobia, as there is no similar campaign to deny the mere existence of gay or bisexual male relationships, but it is the intersection of misogyny and homophobia which causes oftentimes violent reactions to lesbians. It is a double edged sword, and so long as the patriarchal paradigm exists, no matter how much homophobia is reduced, lesbians still suffer as the antitheses of the patriarchy.
Photo by Aiden Craver on Unsplash.
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Lesbianism and the patriarchy: A cognitive dissonance
In May, I was followed and harassed with my partner in daylight on the busy Royal Mile. We were not assaulted, as we could take refuge in a pub, but that was my first encounter with the violent impact of the lesbophobic words and sentiment I have been hearing since I came out at the age of 14. Whether the man followed us because we were together, or as part of a larger epidemic of violence and harassment towards women we did not know. We could speculate but, at the end of the day, as lesbians, our oppression will always be due to both. Years previously, a man filmed me kissing a girl at a party, declaring to his friends that he was “saving this for later.” His sexual harassment was a result of homophobia, but mainly by the misogynistic notion that he was entitled to my body as an object. Lesbians exist at a crossroads between homophobia and misogyny, challenging societal norms at their cores, but overall, it is misogyny which primarily leads to the consistent silencing and violence against lesbians.
Violence and harassment of lesbians is prevalent, yet underreported. From a London bus, to the streets of New York, to South America, violence is globally pervasive, so much so that a group of activists in Chile coined the term “lesbocide” to describe the deliberate killing of lesbians. But it is not that discrimination only takes the form of killing; lesbocide begins with words. Violence begins with harassment; it begins when men harass women for kissing their partners in public, an experience shared by activist Julie Bindel and myself on multiple occasions. It begins when gay men at Manchester Pride in 2018 shouted for lesbians to be dragged off by their “saggy tits,” but, most importantly, it begins with the patriarchy.
The very existence of lesbians challenges the fundamental notion of patriarchy, that men are central. Ethan Burger describes how lesbians occupy a unique space in the patriarchal paradigm. Patriarchy classifies “women” not as an autonomous subject, but as a passive object, only to be defined in relation to (particularly in heterosexual relation to) men. Therefore, lesbians, who by their pure nature, de-centre men, are impossible to define. Because the existence of lesbians disproves the central thesis of patriarchy, patriarchy therefore tries to disprove our existence. There are many attempts to recentre men within lesbian relationships. Through, for instance, oversexualisation and pornographication, patriarchal society attempts to view our relationships as something for male pleasure. It is from this idea that many lesbians are harassed for kissing women in nightclubs; our existence, for many men, is reduced to a pornographic category. Another key area is the attempts to classify lesbian relationships according to heterosexual roles. Asking “who is the man,” or questioning the validity of lesbian sex stems from the patriarchal centralisation of men within relationships.
The artificial binary of gender roles simply is in cognitive dissonance with the existence of lesbian, and this causes violent reactions from those who uphold this gender paradigm. It is not purely homophobia, as there is no similar campaign to deny the mere existence of gay or bisexual male relationships, but it is the intersection of misogyny and homophobia which causes oftentimes violent reactions to lesbians. It is a double edged sword, and so long as the patriarchal paradigm exists, no matter how much homophobia is reduced, lesbians still suffer as the antitheses of the patriarchy.
We have been thinking about language courses all wrong
Photo by Aiden Craver on Unsplash.
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