“Too often, lesbians are only mentioned when violently attacked or when our voices can be used for propaganda against other minorities”
BY AÏDA YANCY, IMAGES BY EL*C
Founded in 2017, the EuroCentralAsian Lesbian* Community (EL*C) is the world’s largest lesbian NGO, and last week we published our annual Observatory on Lesbophobia. With the upcoming European Elections and scary exit polls trailing the far-right’s political success in many countries this gathering of information is more essential than ever.
Good data helps us face down threats and support each other better as activists and as lesbians. That is why the focus of this year’s Observatory was on violence targeting lesbians in the public eye (politicians, journalists, athletes) as well as lesbian representation in the media.
EL*C’s 2024 Observatory shows us that one of the most frequent and damaging stories found in mainstream media in 2022 and 2023 was the false portrayal of lesbians as trans-exclusionary. This narrative originated in the UK where the media has given a high level of visibility to a small number of so-called “gender critical” thinkers and influencers who are lesbians.
This false narrative has spread rapidly across Western and Eastern Europe thanks to the UK’s influential position in terms of culture and language, and is being used to fuel anti-gender propaganda in a number of countries, including Croatia and Bulgaria, where we found articles which were direct translations of pieces published in the United Kingdom. These attacks on trans communities go hand in hand with a right-wing, xenophobic attitude towards everything and everyone who is not seen as white or European enough, using a “divide and conquer” strategy to pit minority groups against each other.
Another frequent lesbian misrepresentation highlighted in our research relates to masculine-presenting and gender non-conforming women and non-binary people. The Observatory found that where the media represents lesbians, especially when it represents lesbians in a positive light, it typically focuses on femme-presenting women, leaving very little space for masculine or gender non-conforming people to be positively reflected in the media. At the same time, the Observatory shows that masculine lesbians across Europe and Central Asia have faced brutal discrimination and oppression going back decades which has pushed many of them to the limits of poverty and social exclusion.
The main takeaway from this year’s Observatory is that mainstream media representation of lesbians is severely lacking. Too often, lesbians are only mentioned when violently attacked or when our voices can be used for propaganda against other minorities. More than that, our study shows a near-total absence of representation of any lesbians who are not white, able-bodied, and middle-class.
But we are more than the media portrayal of our communities. Lesbians have long been subjected to invisibility and misrepresentation while being connected to shame and disgust, but no more. It is time to shake off the stigma.
Let’s refuse to be used as pawns to further the far right’s agenda and flood the world with the positive diverse representation we want to see.
The EL*C – EuroCentralAsian Lesbian* Community – is a feminist network gathering more than 150 lesbian organisations throughout Europe and Central Asia, as well as thousands of LBTI individuals. EL*C uses the word “lesbian” as inclusive of cis, trans, and intersex women and non-binary persons who self-identify as lesbian, bisexual, and queer. For us, the word “lesbian” is part of the political struggle for visibility, empowerment, and representation, and it is a resistance tool against the anti-gender appropriations of our identity and struggle.
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