Lesbian feminist philosopher Monique Wittig’s 1979 provocation that “lesbians are not women” has taken on new resonance today, after decades of activism challenging the presumed coherence of our sex/gender/sexuality system has led to a widespread disenchantment with lesbian-as-sexual-identity. Lesbian’s predominant definition—women who only or primarily desire other women—maintains a binary conception of gender and props up the coherence of “woman” as a category at a time when many reject that premise as essentialist, overuniversalizing, and trans-exclusive.

According to recent research, young people in the US—especially self-identified women—identify as non-heterosexual to an unprecedented degree. Yet they are also the least likely to use “lesbian” as a self-identifier compared to older cohorts. According to our data, this is not only driven by the expansion of sexual identity labels and vocabularies, by also by an interest in distancing from the vocal minority of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) who continue to link “lesbian” and “transphobia” in the public imagination with their rhetorical claims.

However, there is a small but growing group of people who reject lesbian’s definition but not lesbian itself, instead redefining lesbian as a gender, an affect, and/or a political sensibility. Both groups—those who reject and those who embrace lesbian as a signifier—are motivated by queer, intersectional, and trans-inclusive political concerns. But where one sees the anachronism of lesbian as a foregone conclusion, the other is more optimistic and aims to recuperate lesbian as not a sexual identity but as a social space, one with a distinct aesthetic, culture, politic, and sensibility that exists outside the predominant sex and gender binary. The latter are engaged in what literary scholar Eve Sedgwick might call a “reparative reading” of lesbian subjectivity. 

This project considers the provocative question: what discursive work does or can “lesbian” do when same-sex attraction is decentered as its primary meaning? What do we mean by lesbian culture, aesthetics, desire, and community in this evolving social context? Contrary to what many believe, lesbian-as-gender was baked into lesbian feminism from its very origins. The resurgence of TERF ideology over the past decade has lead the media to pit lesbian feminism against transgender rights. This framing obscures the compatibility between them, including lesbian feminism’s critiques of binary sex and its construction of lesbian-as-gender. With this project, I use in-depth interviews, content analysis, and archival data to consider the connectivities between lesbian feminist history and the contemporary use of lesbian by people of all genders.

Under Review:

“The Myth of Lesbian Generation Loss: Finding Intergenerational Solidarities in Digital Sexual Selfhood Projects”

In Preparation:

“It’s a Vibe: 21st Century Shifts in Lesbian Meaning”

Photo Credit: Jakayla Toney