{"id":32279,"date":"2011-01-19T10:59:23","date_gmt":"2011-01-19T15:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=32279"},"modified":"2013-11-19T04:31:27","modified_gmt":"2013-11-19T09:31:27","slug":"personal-and-political-lesbian-visibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/01\/19\/personal-and-political-lesbian-visibility\/","title":{"rendered":"Personal and Political Lesbian Visibility"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Suzy S. sent in an illuminating confession from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.postsecret.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">PostSecret<\/a> in which a woman confesses to being girly, but feels like she has to look more masculine because she&#8217;s a lesbian. \u00a0It reads: &#8220;Because I&#8217;m a LESBIAN I feel obligated to cut my hair short and wear men&#8217;s clothing&#8230; I&#8217;m actually really girly&#8221;:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/01\/girly.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32281\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/01\/girly.jpg\" width=\"545\" height=\"382\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/01\/girly.jpg 605w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/01\/girly-500x350.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 545px) 100vw, 545px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This woman says she feel &#8220;obligated&#8221; to tone down her girliness. \u00a0In fact, adopting a masculinized appearance is one way that women signal to other people that they are gay, something they need to do because heterosexuality is normative and, therefore, generally assumed of everyone in the absence of signs otherwise. \u00a0There are lots of reasons why lesbians may want to be visible.<\/p>\n<p>They may want to be a symbol of the very <em>existence <\/em>of gay people and thereby fight the assumption that everyone is straight. \u00a0They may want to find other gay women with which to build community or to find a girlfriend. \u00a0Or they may simply want to ward off the unwanted attention of men. \u00a0The style choices made by lesbians, then, aren&#8217;t simply about fashion or some internal inclination towards the masculine, as our confessor neatly illustrates. In some cases, at least a little bit, they&#8217;re strategic communication.<\/p>\n<p>Related, see our fun post titled <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/11\/18\/revisioning-aspirational-hair\/\" target=\"_self\">Revisioning Aspirational Hair<\/a>.<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Suzy S. sent in an illuminating confession from PostSecret in which a woman confesses to being girly, but feels like she has to look more masculine because she&#8217;s a lesbian. \u00a0It reads: &#8220;Because I&#8217;m a LESBIAN I feel obligated to cut my hair short and wear men&#8217;s clothing&#8230; I&#8217;m actually really girly&#8221;: This woman says [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12508,225,15,387,54],"class_list":["post-32279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-activismsocial-movements","tag-clothesfashion","tag-culture","tag-dating","tag-sexual-orientation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32279"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59241,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32279\/revisions\/59241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}