Queer women live in constant fear of male violence.
From the women beaten up on a London bus, to the horrors of “corrective rape” experienced by black lesbians in South Africa, to the horrific attack on Teresa Butz and Jennifer Hopper, a lesbian couple in America who caught the eye of a passer-by – a story that has kept me lying awake in fear, readjusting my curtains and triple checking my locks more nights than I care to remember. I haven’t even begun to speak of the sexual and physical violence meted out against lesbians globally. When the LGBTQ+ community is talking about lesbians in this way, what hope is there for the rest of the world?Īnd this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. Why is a bald – or butch – woman something to be ridiculed? And then, Will Smith leaping up to protect his wife’s honour – from what? Being teased as a butch? Defending her femme-ness and heterosexuality? Her honour being contingent on those things?Įven Pride in London was once heard to bemoan “ the hairy lesbians muscling in“. Remember when AA Gill dismissed Clare Balding as “a dyke on a bike”? Or Trump’s repeated digs at Rosie O’Donnell? We might even consider the underlying lesbophobia of the Chris Rock and Will Smith debacle. Or queer women are entirely desexualised.