Lesbian Visibility Week may have been and gone, but everyone’s favorite lesbians seem to be…married? Kristen Stewart and Dylan Meyer, Gabby Windey and Robby Hoffman, and Tanner Fletcher’s Bridal Fashion Week show this month had no shortage of real queer couples.
After all, the easiest way to be visibly gay is with a partner. As a femme-presenting lesbian, as soon as I came out I wished I could have a hot girlfriend to save me from having to explain myself. Saying “my girlfriend” casually in conversation at work rolls off the tongue a lot easier than “I’m gay,” Ellen’s Time cover-style (we still don’t claim her). I once went home with a girl whose name I don’t remember just to prove to the guys hitting on us that we were really on a date (I was 23).
[Redacted] years later, less assumptions are being made on the daily, partially thanks to better lesbian representation in media (Lorde’s recent outfits count, I guess). But straight actresses are still being cast in gay roles, and most people are still surprised when I tell them I’m a lesbian.
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There’s plenty of intelligent discourse out there about why we need to cast queer people in queer roles. So I’m going to talk about a different kind of lesbian visibility: we were never meant to know this much about each other and our exes. They are far too visible online and (depending on where you live) IRL. That person you talked to once in 2020 but never met? They’re on your FYP looking for a wedding venue with their fianceé abroad. Your college one-night-stand has a baby now, it’s in the alumni newsletter. Someone who hit on you at a party once is this week’s Vogue Weddings Instagram post. The person you sent your sex playlist to (it was very well received) but never actually met just celebrated one year with their girlfriend via the requisite carousel post on grid.
Lesbian visibility on a macro level is necessary, urgent now more than ever. But on a personal level, it feels like the first time we’re forced to confront how the romantic and professional choices we’ve made manifest into visible consequences. Being part of the first generation of dykes online from the time we came out to settling down with serious partners means watching each other’s lives unfold in real time. We’re in a golden age of lesbian visibility, but is our one year anniversary Instagram carousel grid post the new Christmas card?
And even if someone ripped your heart out and left it to be trampled on the patio at June PAT, there’s something to be said about a fellow dyke finding love and proudly displaying it on the internet. Over time, a post that feels like a gut punch can morph into a “good for them,” maybe even outfit inspiration. There’s a definitive shift in lesbians of a certain age nearing the end of their Saturn Returns. What used to feel like a great, percolating, chaotic mass of potential pairings in certain scenes is quieting and turning into couples or polycules before our very eyes. Being a lesbian has long meant a thorough and constant knowledge of your cohort’s doing. But only recently has it become so very visible via those who choose to share it online.
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This isn’t a phenomena unique to the sapphic set. Before the internet, curiosity sometimes turned into yearning. It still does. Nobody yearns better than us. But instead of seeing people move on via marriage announcements in the paper, word of mouth, chance encounters, or maybe even a stray voicemail, we’re sharing everything in real time. And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel incredible to start posting about being happy with a hot girlfriend on TikTok instead of sobbing over finding out I’d been dumped via an Instagram Story of my situationship kissing someone else. It feels good to switch from individual lesbian visibility on the internet to coupled lesbian visibility. The switch from thirst traps to lover girl content has been so apparent on my end but who cares, Christmas came early! It is a gift to not care who sees or likes or responds to your story. Being visible for fun and not in an extremely specific way designed to capture a couple people’s attention (c’mon, we’ve all done it) is…peaceful.
Any lesbian who’s been out for more than a month knows one of the most universal lesbian experiences is emotional turmoil and social proximity, so maybe some multi-part TikTok series can be held in equal esteem with blue chip art in our cultural canon. It’s what made The L Word so entertaining and real even though so much of the show was pure fiction. It’s the common ground you can find with just about any other dyke (the breakup of course). And it’s what makes finally finding someone worth celebrating online however much you want to. Seeing Gabby and Robby’s courthouse wedding on Instagram almost healed the years-old wound Shane abandoning Carmen at the altar created.
It kind of feels like a cop out to rely on a partner to prevent everyone who sees you from jumping to straight conclusions or lend greater meaning to sharing your life online. But the outfit wasn’t gay enough so I needed an accessory (usually, a more masculine-presenting partner) trend by predominantly femme lesbians on TikTok shows this feeling is still very common for lesbians who “look straight.” For a while, my own lesbian visibility meant challenging people’s perceptions of what a lesbian looks like. And the ever-growing lesbian internet has helped so many people figure out what presentation feels most authentic to them, learn about sex, and feel seen even without someone’s hand to hold.
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So it might be self-indulgent to make edits of me watching my girlfriend play hockey at Chelsea Piers as if we’re in a movie or romance on ice book (it is an established genre) for a couple of seconds. But sharing snippets of actual, possible, joyful lesbian life is arguably more meaningful to our community than watching Margaret Qualley play gay for the second time in a new movie. And this being shared along with exes and friends and everyone in-between sharing their visibly lesbian lives in parallel is praxis. Maybe we don’t always need more highly produced lesbian visibility (don’t get me wrong, ‘Be With’ from the Bottoms soundtrack is on the sex playlist), but more everyday examples. It’s so exciting to see other queer people in the wild or online. Especially if you don’t already know them. The gay nod is held in such high esteem for a reason. And it’s absolutely a privilege to be able to subvert assumptions and the effort flagging can take by just holding someone’s hand or kissing them.
By sharing our lives on the internet, we are creating one of the greatest living examples of lesbian visibility in front of other queer people. TikTok lesbians have their faults, but they single handedly helped so many people discover their sexuality during the pandemic. When ‘representation matters’ became a queer colloquialism and shortly thereafter a punchline, I don’t think we envisioned 15 second clips of people touching the tops of door frames necessarily being the lesbian visibility that rivaled Kate Moennig’s casting on The L Word in impact. But the sudden ability to see each other with an immediacy and scale we’d never experienced before was a revelation. So maybe coming across your situationship’s new girlfriend on your FYP due to the strength of the algorithm was worth the sting for the greater good.
Being gay on the internet, whether you’re single, partnered,or poly, is important. I promise, if you’re a lesbian online, the visibility will follow. We’ve always known how to find each other. And if you’re more of an observer, that’s hot and necessary, too. Some of us like being watched.
Honorable Mentions
In the spirit of nostalgia for party coverage columns, some new and notable sapphic happenings:
- Jennifer Beals’ book signing at the Union Square Barnes and Noble last week for her new book, The L Word: A Photographic Journal, with Ilene Chaiken and Rachel Shelley (Peyton Dix tried to get her to sign the book “To my lover Cindi” but it wasn’t allowed).
- Cat Burns joining the Celebrity Traitors UK cast.
- Lorde’s chain.
- Juliana Ramirez’s new Substack, Search Terms, with occasional input from her girlfriend, Jane, has impeccable taste and recommendations re: queer style and design.
- The Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn is free to visit for anyone who books a time slot on their website.
- Pride and Prejudice being re-released to theaters to celebrate its 20th anniversary is a really great opportunity to wear a suit to the movies.
- Fun Home author Alison Bechdel’s new book, Spent, is out.
- And if you need a new gay haircut for spring, go to Tommy @axebodypray.
Catch up on previous instalments of Dyke Drama below:
Is being an (actually) hopeless romantic the best way to find love this Valentine’s Day?
Even as a lesbian, is it ever safe to show your full, ‘crazy’ self in a relationship?
