Sian Lambert reflects on the importance of visibility
IMAGE VIA PEXELS
Do you remember when you first saw a lesbian? When you first became aware that lesbian was something that a person could be?
I was nine, Wimbledon was on and my babysitter told me that Martina Navratilova was a lesbian. I didn’t really know what it meant and it would be years before I would attach that label to myself, but I remember that moment with startling clarity. Something about that throwaway comment resonated so deeply.
It seems incredible now, when children’s books can have princesses falling in love with each other, when TikTok is awash with queer influencers and when female couples are on TV ads for banks and cars, that it really wasn’t that long that ago that queer women, actually queer people of any kind, were almost invisible. That a person could spend nearly a decade in this world without even knowing the word lesbian, without knowing that any option existed other than heterosexuality.
This week marks the annual observation of Lesbian Visibility Week (22-28 April). Having grown up in the 1980s and early 1990s I can all too well see the need for Lesbian Visibility back then. Section 28 made sure there was no mention of LGBTQIA people in schools. Any lesbians who appeared on the TV did so infrequently and generally well after the 9pm watershed. There was no internet. Queer people in general were not very visible, but queer women were particularly unseen.
I first started to think that lesbian visibility was something that might be pertinent to me I plucked up the courage to buy my first copy of DIVA in 1996. I remember I had to go to the alternative bookshop (which had recently been firebombed by the National Front) to buy it.
It felt like I was opening the door to an alternative universe. Suddenly I was seeing a whole world of diverse women loving other women, reading stories of women of all ages and backgrounds, learning about different subcultures and identities that I would never experience in real life.
It’s a world that has enabled me to live a life that nine-year-old me wouldn’t have dreamt of. The LGBTQIA world may have been initially invisible but once I started to see it my eyes were opened. Once I’d decided I wasn’t going to live up to the societal expectation of finding a man and settling down, suddenly all those other societal expectations also looked less compulsory.
But surely now, nearly 30 years on, we ARE visible? So why do we need Lesbian Visibility Week?
Well, while LGBTQIA people are undoubtedly much more visible now than a couple of decades ago, that visibility has clear limits. Increased mainstream visibility has also somewhat narrowed the range of lesbians who do appear. Back in the 90s, LGBTQIA people were mostly relegated to the margins of late night scheduling. But screenings of films like The Watermelon Woman, Thin Ice and Desert Hearts and programmes like Gaytime TV and the memorably named Working Class Dykes From Hell and Invasion Of The Big-Haired Lesbians (yes, both of those were real!) presented arguably more diverse representations of lesbian lives than we see now.
While queer people may be much more visible, as a white, cisgender femme-presenting person I am much more likely to see people who look a bit like me popping up in the mainstream media. Black lesbians, butch lesbians, older lesbians, disabled lesbians, trans lesbians… all are a lot less likely to see themselves reflected.
For me, that’s why we need Lesbian Visibility Week. Not just because LGBTQIA folks in general are still not visible enough, although we’re not. Not just because lesbians, queer women and non-binary folk remain much less visible than gay men, although we do. But also so we can see and celebrate the wonderful diversity of ways in which we can live lesbian lives.
There’s a saying that you can’t be what you can’t see. It’s not entirely true: generations of lesbians have managed to exist even though we were never visible. But life is a lot less lonely if you can see people like you. And life is a lot richer if you can also see people who are not like you at all, but whose existence shows that a different life is possible.
This Lesbian Visibility Week, a partnership with UK Black Pride will shine a much-needed spotlight on the amazing Black lesbians whose contributions to the struggle for LGBTQIA rights has been overlooked. I look forward to learning about some of these amazing people. I also just look forward to celebrating the many wonderfully different ways of living as a lesbian.
DIVA magazine celebrates 30 years in print in 2024. If you like what we do, then get behind LGBTQIA media and keep us going for another generation. Your support is invaluable.
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