We live in an era where anyone and their dog can declare themselves a lesbian, no femaleness is even required. We bona fide lesbians are quite sick of it. The loneliness and isolation, the ostracism and depression, all because we are actively prevented from finding our own and building community. So yes, I resent the term "political lesbian". Whatever else they may be, however wonderful and enlightened, lovely human beings they may be, they are not lesbians. Because a lesbian is a human female who is EXCLUSIVELY and SEXUALLY ATTRACTED to other bio/natal females. And this means something. Because it's not a "choice". Only non-lesbians wake up one morning and say, "hmm, I think I will be a lesbian". Me? I actually tried to be straight for about a year and lost my gold star. Because after "coming out" I RAN back to the soul-killing "safety" of the closet, trying to conform to a chemistry that was not mine and could never make sense on a cellular level.

The proximity of those "consensual" encounters caused me visceral PANIC, a nausea born deep within my very soul that could never be vomited into relief. Incapable of finding males even vaguely interesting let alone attractive, I went through a lesbian rite-of-passage of my generation, trying to be straight while vehemently repulsed. I went through other rites-of passage as well, like getting smacked at home and running away, getting kicked out of school for liking girls, being isolated from friends and girlfriends that I loved. I was one of the lucky ones. Had I been 10 years older I would have been electrocuted or lobotomized. Even now, women are forced-married, raped or killed. In some places that's standard for lesbians. Though it's currently way more fashionable to just trans us, sterilize us for life, give us medicalized diseases, shorten our life-spans, especially if we are gender-non-conformists which so many of us are.

So yeah, I can see how a woman who is basically straight, sees her crappy position on the gender-hierarchy, her subordinate status in an unhappy and scary relationship (where no one's going to save her) and then looks over and sees the awesome things, community, culture and equal relationships we lesbians build for ourselves when we are actually able to, (which in the 70s we were), and could maybe feel that it would be great to have those things. I can see how she could decide that by a sleight-of-hand, verbal legerdemain and adroit nomenclature, that it could all be her own as well. I get it.

I also understand that you don't need to lie about your sexuality to have women's community OR to withdraw your support from the patriarchy and its enforcers. You don't NEED to declare yourself a lesbian and pass yourself off as someone you're not. No, the only reason you would do that is if you want to violate boundaries and encroach on spaces where you would not otherwise be welcomed. So tell me why, at a time when we understand why blackface, transracialism and (hopefully here at least) transmedicalization are all a form of appropriation, it's perfectly okay to perform lesbian-face and come on a lesbian board to defend it!