After years of misappropriation, it’s time to reclaim the word ‘lesbian’

When contestants on Britain’s first ever dating show for ‘girls who like girls’ were asked how they feel about the term ‘lesbian’, it opened up an interesting and important dialogue about the evolution of language – and how it can be used in some instances to undermine, offend and cause harm.

‘I just say “I’m gay“. I don’t like using the word “lesbian”‘, said Naee.

‘I just say “I’m into girls” or I say “I’m queer”,’ Abbie agreed.

Georgia, the I Kissed a Girl contestant who initially posed the question, then proudly reclaimed the term, after sharing her own struggles with the word and its negative connotations.

But the stigma surrounding the word isn’t anything new. In 2022, research by charity Just Like Us found that 68% feared they would be perceived as ‘man-hating’, ‘over-sexualised’ or ‘anti-trans’ by coming out as lesbian. And the over-sexualisation of lesbians was found to be the biggest barrier for young lesbians aged 18 to 24 (36%).

Sarah Stella Edwards, LGBTQ+ consultant at SheSpot, a sexual wellness service for women, explains how the word has been misappropriated over time.

‘Particularly back when lesbians had very little representation in the media, they were seen and labelled as “butch” or “manly”, but lesbians have never been a monolith,’ she told Metro.co.uk.

‘I think the rise in lesbian porn also has a lot to answer for, in terms of how lesbians are perceived by society,’ she adds. ‘Lesbians in porn are often portrayed as hypersexualised and something to fantasise over, for the male gaze.’

The results of Pornhub’s 2023 Year in Review speak to this, with ‘lesbian’ being the biggest search term in the US last year – as it was in 2017 and 2019 also.

‘Some lesbians distance themselves from the word “lesbian” because there are so many conflicting connotations to the word that don’t resonate with them, and they prefer to self-label as “gay” or “queer”,’ Sarah says.

It isn’t just humans who view the term negatively

Robyn Exton, founder of Her, the largest dating app for women, non-binary and trans people within the LGBTQ community, also highlights how the word ‘lesbian’ is penalised in search engines and often flagged as spam in people’s inboxes or blocked by internet providers.

‘In the early days of the business [which launched in 2015], it was really challenging – especially when it came to SEO. There was so much web content that was largely around lesbian porn, that whenever you used to search “lesbian” it used to just give you porn results,’ she explains.

‘It’s taken a really long time for queer women businesses to exist and reclaim the word, to get the visibility and to make sure that when you search “lesbian” it’s not just this pocket of the internet that men tried to capitalise, but actually authentic lesbian classes, vacations, and whatever queer women are looking for.’

Although the situation is improving, Robyn says there’s still a huge number of cis straight men going to great lengths to fulfill the fantasies they see in porn.

‘We have, as a business, issues with cis men who want to try and sign up to the app because they want to connect with a lesbian and they’ll want to be able to say, “you’ve just not met the right person.” They do not understand that Her is a space for people who do not want to meet men.’

But ‘lesbian’ hasn’t always been a ‘bad’ word

Both the terms ‘lesbian’ and ‘sapphic’ derive from Sappho of Lesbos, an Archaic poet who was born and lived on the Greek island from around 630 BCE to 570 BCE.

Though sadly most her work is now lost and the few examples that survived are just fragments, it is understood that her lyric poetry incorporated homoerotic themes.

In the essay Female Homoeroticism in A Companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities, Sandra Boehringer, associate professor of Greek history at the University of Strasbourg, said the poems ‘clearly celebrate eros between women’.

Dr Hannah Roche, a senior lecturer in twentieth-century literature and culture, and author of the book The Outside Thing: Modernist Lesbian Romance, also says that Sappho has since inspired queer writers, who have shaped her ‘into an enduring symbol of lesbian identity’. 

‘There are powerful reasons for identifying with Sappho and celebrating her role in LGBTQ+ history, beyond the fact that “sapphic” and “lesbian” are part of our vocabulary,’ she adds. ‘Sappho shows us that women who love women have always been here, and she reminds us of the pleasures, passions, and poetic achievements of the queer past.’

The rise of the term ‘sapphic’

Robyn also notes the recent uptick in women using ‘sapphic’ as their identity on Her, and believes it’s closely tied to TikTok and due to the fact that it feels more inclusive for more people.

‘All the evolutions in the broad LGBTQ+ vocabulary we have… there are so many words to describe so many things. I think people struggle to find the right words.

‘But I think it’s settled now that people have this umbrella term “sapphic” that speaks to this womanhood area that is very inclusive of non-binary and trans folk. And then it allows space to then be clear there are lesbians within that group, there are bisexuals within that group, there are pansexuals in this group, but we all fit.’

The women reclaiming the word ‘lesbian’

Part of the process to reclaim ‘lesbian’ includes featuring it loudly and proudly in the names of organisations, to hit back at the word being so heavily censored on search engines. Sabah created a inclusive community group, Lez Be United, for queer women wishing to celebrate women’s football. 

‘I started Lez Be United because first and foremost I love football, but I was also desperate for a space that felt inclusive. We never secondguessed the name choice; we are loudly and proudly a lesbian-led, trans and non-binary inclusive team.’

Polly is based in London and is a partnership consultant and co-founder of Out & Wild festival, which is aimed at LGBTQ+ women and non-binary people. Just like Her’s Robyn, when it came to setting up her businesses online she also struggled with getting around firewalls when using the word ‘lesbian’.

‘Firewalls are usually managed by men, because they live in the IT world. And they’re so biased against the word “lesbian”.

‘When I was developing the festival in 2021 and I was looking for stock images to do with sport, I typed in “gay sport” and it had all these images. And then I typed “lesbian sport” and the search engine told me that it was restricted content. I was quite shocked,’ she says.

‘Imagine if you’re a 16-year-old girl and you’re thinking about your sexuality and you’re just interested in sport, and that comes up. It’s become a word that men associate with porn.’ 

But Cara is now embracing ‘lesbian’ and ‘gay’ as a way to identify herself.  

‘If I’m talking to a straight man and it comes up that I’m a lesbian, they sometimes try to make a joke about it or they’re more likely to say something inappropriate about it and pass it off as a joke. It’s weird when you don’t know someone for them to joke about something sexual. 

‘On dating apps it feels a bit safer to say lesbian. Not that it feels dangerous to use it in person, but it is something that maybe as I’m getting older I need to reclaim it now, like when they had that conversation in I Kissed a Girl.

‘It shouldn’t be something embarrassing or to worry about. It’s a case of “I am going to identify as this and there’s nothing wrong about it”. I’m not going to shy away from it. It’s like how queer has been reclaimed. It’s the time to reclaim lesbian.’

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