“Stepping into that truth didn’t erase my womanhood or the life I’d lived. It layered on top of it”
BY RAGA D’SILVA, IMAGE BY PAVEL DANILYUK VIA CANVA
Being born a girl was the first crime I committed. I didn’t choose it. I didn’t know it at the time. But the world met me as a woman first, and everything that came after was measured against that. Being a woman taught me fear before I even understood desire. It taught me how to shrink, how to bend, how to count my steps and my words, how to make my body smaller in rooms that weren’t built for me. It taught me that danger isn’t always obvious and that power isn’t equally shared.
Society expected me to follow a path. To marry a man. To have children. To fit neatly into the life others had mapped out. I did all of that. I played the part. I gave the world the story it wanted. And in doing so, I learned what it meant to hide the truth of my own heart, to silence the part of me that knew love could feel different, that my desire did not follow the script.
Then came the quiet, slow realisation. The awakening that my heart didn’t move toward men in the way it was supposed to. That love had another shape, another name, lesbian. Stepping into that truth didn’t erase my womanhood or the life I’d lived. It layered on top of it. I carried all the fear, caution, rage and resilience I’d learned from navigating a patriarchal world, along with the weight of social expectation I had lived through. Suddenly, I wasn’t just a woman navigating misogyny. I was a woman who broke expectations. A woman whose love disrupted the orbit of men.
There is tension there. Women are taught to soften themselves, to make space for others, to be careful. Lesbians step out of that orbit. We choose women. We refuse the rules. And yes, vulnerabilities remain. The fear, the judgements, the microaggressions. Sometimes sharper. Sometimes lonelier.
In my case, being a woman and a lesbian are not two separate identities stacked neatly; they are braided. My feminism is shaped by my queerness. My queerness is shaped by the misogyny and conditioning I have lived through. Pull them apart, and you lose the essence of who I am.
As we mark Lesbian Visibility Week (20 – 26 April), I feel that intersection keenly. There is struggle, yes, but also pride. Visibility matters. Stories matter. And in celebrating both my womanhood and my lesbianism, I see the strength in being unapologetically myself. I didn’t “become” a lesbian one day. I became aware. I was always both. And in that intersection, messy, complicated, sometimes painful, always real, I found clarity. I found myself.
Raga D’silva, is an author, public speaker, human rights activist and the host of the Older Queer Voices podcast.
Love media made by and for LGBTQIA+ women and gender diverse people? Then you’ll love DIVA. We’ve been spotlighting the community for over 30 years. Here’s how you can get behind queer media and keep us going for another generation: linkin.bio/ig-divamagazine
Did you know that DIVA has now become a charity? Our magazine is published by the DIVA Charitable Trust. You can find out more about the organisation and how you can offer your support here: divacharitabletrust.com
