Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are more likely to be depressed than heterosexuals. We experience poorer mental health at higher rates than the straights. Studies on both sides of the Atlantic consistently prove it. Factors like homophobia, isolation from community, and fear of coming out all contribute to this crisis.
And while this research has led to important conversations and resources for the community, there’s one urgent issue that goes consistently unaddressed: the extreme damage that ongoing debates around sex and gender are doing to lesbians’ mental health.
No issue has divided the LGBT community quite like gender. For decades LGB people have fought for the right to love, desire, and partner with people of the same sex; to have those relationships recognized as legitimate by the state and society as a whole. But just as equality came within reach, a new danger emerged – this time from within the community lesbians were instrumental to building. The idea that a person’s chosen gender, as opposed to their biological sex, should be the basis of attraction is an existential threat to gay and lesbian sexuality.
Prominent trans activist Sophia Banks argued that “terms like lesbian and gay are cisnormative and thus oppressive”, and should therefore be abandoned. Morgan Page ran a workshop in partnership with Planned Parenthood called “Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling”, all about “breaking down sexual barriers” and convincing lesbians to sleep with transwomen. What were once niche and extremist views have entered the mainstream of LGBT community.
On top of this, we’ve been bombarded with a slew of think pieces claiming the term lesbian is obsolete; Buzzfeed articles ‘joking’ that lesbian sounds “like a rare disease”; commentaries claiming same-sex attraction is a thing of the past in a modern, sexually fluid world. Writer Shannon Keating described the word lesbian as “stale and stodgy”, claiming it should be scrapped altogether in favor of queer – preferable because it doesn’t communicate a clear set of desires and boundaries, and is therefore more inclusive.
This problematizing of the word lesbian and delegitimizing of all that it represents has devastating consequences. Lesbians are branded bigots for asserting our right to same-sex attraction, exiled from friendship and community groups for saying that we’re not interested in sex that involves penis. We are pressured not only by our peers, but the very organizations founded to protect our rights, into accepting males as potential partners. This amounts to sexual coercion and gaslighting.
The longer the debate rages on, the worse the situation becomes. Lesbians, we are told, are hateful if we don’t consider transwomen as romantic and sexual partners. As if the only purpose of our sexuality is to provide validation to others. But not having sex with somebody doesn’t equate to oppressing them. Sexual entitlement towards women, on the other hand, is a cornerstone of patriarchy.
This situation is toxic. Shaming lesbians for our sexual boundaries is fueled by misogyny and homophobia – whether it comes from the queer left or religious right. Unfortunately, young lesbians coming out into this context have never known anything else. And if they express any doubts or misgivings, they risk being cut off from their community altogether. Lesbians are increasingly isolated and traumatized as a result.
Intervention is desperately needed. Yet government-financed LGBT organizations steer well clear of this topic. Some are unwilling to weather public backlash and risk being defunded; others are aware that their very existence depends on denying the problem exists at all.
Which means that many lesbians find ourselves caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock is exile from our community. And the hard place is institutional neglect. Even charities designed to support LGBT mental health offer little in the way of safety.
If a lesbian traumatized by this culture of sexual coercion pursues therapy through an LGBT charity, she’s at risk of being shamed and further stigmatized by the very person responsible for providing her mental healthcare.
Lesbians are falling through the cracks of the system. Our mental health, our very wellbeing, is collateral damage in the gender war. We are treated as expendable by the queer community and straight society. Lesbians have always been thought of as unnatural for loving, desiring, and prioritizing other women – the way we are now shunned is nothing more than a continuation of that sexist shaming.
