queer issues

I remember being very surprised when I first learned about the role of the lesbian activist group Lavender Menace in shaping 1970s feminism. In the early 1970s, the mainstream feminist movement was not accepting of lesbians. Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique and president of the National Organization for Women, famously referred to lesbians as “lavender menace” to the women’s movement, because she felt that stereotypes of lesbians as masculine and widespread bias against lesbians would make it more difficult for the primarily white heterosexual middle-class women in the women’s movement to create political change if they were associated too closely with lesbian activism. Thus, NOW worked to distance itself from lesbian issues, not allowing an early lesbian rights organization, the Daughters of Bilitis, to be a sponsor for NOW’s First Congress to Unite Women in 1969.

I came out to my mom (and, consequently, probably the rest of my immediate family).

My friend R had been poking me to do it, telling me to "take the drama down about twenty notches," but that hadn't stopped me from curling up in my computer chair and wanting to throw up at the mere thought of doing it. After all, I am the girl who spent hours creating elaborate alibies to hide her trips to Giovanni's Room (especially when it meant meeting Alison Bechdel!), carefully choosing outfits that were "appropriately feminine," even if she really would have been more comfortable going about in drag that day and calling herself Andrew, etc.

Sometimes I feel guilty for looking at girls sexually.

Not for the usual reasons that come with being from a very religious family, but because I have to wonder if fantasizing about the cute cashier at the bookstore or the girl in my English class or even a woman in the mall (while I simultaneously wish I had her shoes) is just the same as a guy downloading porn from the internet without even bothering to learn the actress' name.

Is it different because I'm a woman, a lesbian, or because I consider myself a "feminist"? Or because the women I'm attracted to tend to be heavier and "more ethnic" than Hugh Hefner's girlfriends?