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theoldlesbianwithcats · 7 months

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22.02.17 — On lesbian socialisation (by sespursongles)

We all know how female socialisation works, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone discuss the concept of lesbian socialisation, how it affects us, with what consequences — and how it is like female socialisation, squared.

To put it in a nutshell — female socialisation teaches you that you are inherently worth less than men and you must always defer to them and prioritise them and their feelings over yourself and other women. Lesbian socialisation teaches you that you are inherently worth less than male-attracted women and you must always defer to them and prioritise them and their feelings over yourself and other lesbians.

Lesbians are of course affected by both, although being gay can help us fight some aspects of female socialisation—e.g., the need to prioritise men or win male approval. Not that it doesn't affect us at all, but the message that “you are worth less than men” does impact you differently when men are worth less than women to you in your love life, and “you must behave in X and Y ways and treat other women like rivals for male interest” sounds like irritating white noise when getting male interest isn't a desired outcome.

On the other hand, we have nothing to help us resist the impact of lesbian socialisation, because we love women. We are fully behind the idea of prioritising women. Add to this a healthy dose of internalised lesbophobia, and we are now fully behind the idea that mlw are worth more than lesbians and we should prioritise these women in particular, always.

Not to mention the factor of our social isolation and quasi-total lack of outside support — how every other group and political faction hates us in a different (but, deep down, the same) way, how desperate we are for allies.

I wrote a post last week about lesbophobia and double standards in the radfem community, and one part of it was directed every bit as much at lesbians than at mlw: “Het/bi women are really seen as inherently more important and worthy of respect than lesbians, aren’t they? Can’t waste your shock and anger on people who hate lesbians because you must save it for when a lesbian calls a manloving woman a manlover.”

I wrote that post because there were lesbians who were much more shocked and outraged at other lesbians for hurting a bi woman’s feelings by calling her a lesbophobe and a “manlover”, than at said bi woman for being a lesbophobe who defended the idea that lesbians can be manlovers. (She was defending a book I mentioned previously, written by a bi woman, in which a lesbian falls in love with a guy.) There were also lesbians who hurried to write posts urging other lesbians to calm down and be nice when we started reacting to the lesbophobia, but felt no need to write posts telling mlw who were being lesbophobic to calm down and be nice. And there were lesbians who felt the need to write posts reassuring “our bi sisters” that we still love them and we know most of them aren’t like that and NotAllBis and wlw solidarity, but didn’t feel the need to respond to this surge of lesbophobia with comforting posts of solidarity to fellow lesbians. That’s what I call lesbian socialisation. Put manloving women first, always. Suck it up, be nice, placate, placate. Can’t risk alienating the very few “allies” we have.

Female socialisation teaches you “it’s in your best immediate interests to care more about men’s feelings than about women’s oppression.” Lesbian socialisation teaches you “it’s in your best immediate interests to care more about manloving women’s feelings than about lesbian oppression.”

And that’s exactly why the queer/bi/trans community has been able to dismantle the lesbian community so easily and walk all over us. Because all lesbians have been taught to never dare prioritise ourselves and our own wants and needs, to always put every other group’s feelings and wishes before ours, especially other women and other marginalised groups who need our help and compassion*. Gay men don’t have this problem and so they still have “exclusionary” spaces. *And these groups know it. They might not know it consciously, but they know it, and they exploit it.

Every time a het radfem reminds a lesbian of how dangerous and painful partnering with men is, every time a bi woman throws those bi suicide and rape statistics at us, every time a “trans lesbian” talks about how much it hurts his feelings to be rejected by mean lesbians who won’t date him, they are counting on lesbian socialisation to kick in, waiting for lesbians to feel terrible and forget about our own best interests and duly start prioritising theirs.

Het radfems do this deliberately, to get us to admit that het privilege isn’t really a thing and, back in the day, to convince lesbians to accept their political lesbianism rubbish (“Why won’t you welcome us in your community as your lesbian sisters? Do you really want us to go back to our hurtful hetero relationships?”). Bi women do this deliberately, to guilt-trip us into “including” them everywhere and shut us up when we talk about their lesbophobia. “Trans lesbians” do this deliberately, to get us to fuck them. (Men don’t have complicated motivations).

They all know the stereotypes (they create them) that are an integral part of lesbian socialisation, teaching us our worthlessness. The mean lesbian, the angry lesbian, the manhating lesbian, the ugly hairy rabid hysterical cruel insensitive heartless biphobic transphobic gatekeeping selfish exclusionary oppressive genital-fetishising lesbian.

Lesbian socialisation is the incredibly useful and necessary extension of female socialisation. It functions to keep the women most detached from patriarchal institutions, the women who least need men, who have the most reasons to rebel, quiet and well-behaved. Growing up as a lesbian, you receive female socialisation, hear that as a woman you are subhuman and born to love men, serve men, worship men, and you feel angry. But you also receive lesbian socialisation, hear that you are not merely subhuman but subwoman, lower than low, if you turn into one of those crazy rabid angry lesbians, and you back down.

And other groups know how to use all these hateful messages and stereotypes against us, either throwing them at us outright, or subtly reminding us of them, then watching us desperately scramble trying to prove that they aren’t true, or at least not true of me. They know.

So, it would be good if lesbians knew, too. Be aware that lesbian socialisation exists, that it affects you, and that other groups use it against you. Notice patterns. Notice in what contexts the calls for “empathy”, “solidarity”, “sisterhood”, politeness and niceness start flowing. Notice in what contexts other groups give you tragic statistics about their own oppression. Notice when you start feeling bad and guilty and ask yourself why. Who are you prioritising? (Usually, yourself and/or your fellow lesbians.) Whose feelings are you ignoring? Who are you concretely hurting? (Usually, no one. Prioritising lesbians does not actively hurt other groups, no matter how badly they want us to believe that—using the aforementioned tragic statistics as well as words like “denying us” to make us feel like our bodies, affection, time, solidarity and emotional labour are as necessary to them as oxygen.)

And remind yourself that it’s okay to prioritise lesbians, and that you do not have to care about people and groups who have shown time and again that they do not care about you. When a group has a long history of disregard or blatant hatred of lesbians and shows zero willingness to change, it’s okay not to care anymore. It’s okay to answer questions like “Do you support X group?” (trans people, radfems, gay men, bi women…) with “No. I support lesbians.”

Because you are not required by law to support groups who do not support you back, let alone groups who are actively promoting an ideology that hurts you and your community. It’s nice to be nice and polite and supportive, but when the niceness and politeness and support always flow in the same direction, at some point, it’s time to stop. Allow yourself to stop. (At the very least, allow other lesbians to stop and don’t lecture them for not being sufficiently nice and polite to the groups that you, personally, still have some faith in. She probably has good reasons for losing her faith in them.)

If you do stop, you’ll probably feel very guilty at first (they’ll make sure you do), but it will get easier. You might even start feeling better about yourself now that you stopped caring about some groups who never cared about you.

And finally, please keep in mind that if you don’t prioritise yourself and other lesbians, no one else will. No other group will care. Not even marginalised groups who share some aspect of their oppression with us. Not het women, not trans people, not gay men, not bi women. No other group will defend us, support us and prioritise our hurt feelings over their oppression — what they constantly demand of us. No matter how nice, accommodating, polite, helpful we are to them. It’s never going to be our turn.

#seven years later and it's truer than ever #at this point I think gold stars shouldn't bother with feminism bc most straight and bi women just want to use us as human shields or pawns #and would rather kill themselves than take advice from us or follow our lead #and the time we spend caring about them is time we don't spend on lesbians #hence why we have no true spaces or events #and not much art about us

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