A Dyke A Broad #21

In which Valerie Solanas was absolutely 100% right about everything. I kid you not. Plus photos.

Mar 01, 2021

Hello from Paris where I’m losing my shit.

Not from any Parisian or Covidian thing, but because yesterday I made the big mistake of googling the word lesbian for something I’m working on and found, besides the usual triple x lesbo porn (in which two women screw, but only until the plumber arrives with his big delicious dick), an article in a mainstream health website that reaches 200 million people a month purporting to be the guide to first-time lesbian sex. Except…

It, too, spent quite a lot of time on pricks. Because apparently nothing says lesbian these days like a mouth full of cock and a drawer full of condoms. Yep, apparently baby lesbians should expect to suck penis. And also take it in the ass and the vag.

Yeah, this is 2021, and a girl grappling with her first crush on another girl at school and finally working up the nerve to google lesbian, will only find porn, and more porn. Or worse, the more insiduous Lesbian Sex 101 nonsense cynically peddled by a digital marketing behemoth. Pure male fantasy wrapped in sweet self-help language and sold for big bucks. A stealthy weapon of compulsory heterosexuality which demands every vagina be open to every dick.

I don’t care what gender the dick comes wrapped in. It’s tragic, and infuriating that the world cannot imagine—not for one single instant—a place, a word, for the same-sex desire of a female.

After twenty-five years of dyke activism, I should be used to it. How easy it is to erase lesbians—lesbian desire, lesbian bodies, lesbian experience, lesbian histories. And lesbian courage, too. Remember that? How long it took most of us to admit our desires to ourselves? Because we knew what it would cost us. And did.

Remember how many families sent us into exile and homelessness? How many preachers and priests terrified us with warnings of hell? How many parents shut up their dyke daughters in mental hospitals? How many states tried (and try) to electroshock away the homo to transform us into good wives, and mothers and citizens? How many of us went to jail? How many lost custody of their kids? How even now we are beaten, and raped, and killed, or just harassed? Yes, how many of us are still afraid to be out at our jobs? Or are passed over? Are not safe on the street?

But there was also the joy. Joy’s being erased, too. That incredible feeling when you discover you’re not alone. That there are other people, other girls, like you. That incredible lightness.

There’s also the joy of discovering the female body at leisure. Unafraid. When you’re finally out, at least a little, and you don’t have to look over you shoulder, or wait for the terrifying knock at the door. Then there’s that pride the first time you hold your girlfriend’s hand in the street. Pause to kiss. Maybe even join a demo. Say fuck you to the world of male supremacy which marked you for itself. To serve and to breed. To be martyrs, put everyone above yourself.

It took a lot to break free. We forget how powerful it is, desire. Lust. How deep it goes. We forget, too, the damage when it’s associated with stigma and shame.

Yet here we are, in 2021, after decades of battle, once again allowing young lesbians to be guilt-tripped and trained to suck dick. Forced to be like any other young hetero female. Sending the message that their bodies, their desires are never theirs. Neither is that fucking terrifying word lesbian which once meant homo female, but has been non-consensually redefined and colonized by straight, male-bodied people. Yeah, I know. #notalltranswomen. Still.

There’s so much silence around this. Especially from the people that wiggled their judgy, censorious fingers at Rachel Dolezal who wanted so much to be black that she lived as black, worked as black, passed as black, but because she was born white was declared persona non grata, refused the label. Because white people aren’t allowed to colonize Black experience, Black histories, Black culture, the word Black itself.

If that logic makes sense, it should apply to dykes, too, but never does. Instead, homo females are declared monsters and transphobes for insisting on the original definition of the word, lesbian, and saying, “You, male person, do not correspond to our desire. You were not born with bodies like ours. Which means you do not share our lesbian experience. You do not have our lesbian history framed by male supremacy. Because lesbian history only exists because we did not have dicks AND weren’t attracted to them. Which made us inherently disruptive. A challenge to the way things are. And we paid for it. And are paying still.”

Or am I wrong? Is this all just a misunderstanding? Then fine. Why not accept that there are already plenty of words, good words, great words even, for people with dicks who like women. In fact, come over here to the off-the-rack specials. Heterosexual would fit. No? You don’t like that? I hear pansexual is hot nowadays. Why don’t you give that a try? Or gynesexual? No? You only want plain jane lesbian? No sorry. That does not suit you at all. Only a few have the right shape to wear it. Trans lesbian might work. Though that outfit really needs the modifier, or the idea falls apart. Why not queer? That’s been so cleverly redesigned it’s practically a linguistic muumuu. It even works as a verb!

Think I’m an idiot? A TERF? Every day I care less. Human rights don’t extend to the colonization of words, of bodies, of lives.

This is only a big deal because the real issue is male power (and female fear and shame). Because everyone knows it is the nature of words to exclude. It is morally neutral that dog excludes cat, pear excludes apple. Black is not the new white for any honkey to claim. Lesbian is not a blank all-purpose word for people who like to fuck females.

Lesbian means what it means. Same-sex attracted females of all races, classes, abilities, nations who may express their own gender any way they damn please. You don’t accept it? Too bad. We deserve our own fucking word. We earned it. Get your own. You misogynist lesbo-hating hetero chauvinist pigs. And leave our baby dykes alone.

As my patron saint of the week wrote,

"Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.”
—Valerie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto

Kelly At Large

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