Lesbian Spaces

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Be it the comment sections of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival website or the open mics of Charis in Atlanta, Ga, without fail, some woman is exclaiming “Why aren’t there any more lesbian spaces?”. This exclamation gives way to cheers and cries of outrage as the crowd yells “Because no one’s just a lesbian anymore!” What does it mean to be “just a lesbian”? Which lesbian spaces are dying off? What makes a space a lesbian space? Is this outrage really fear? Is the death of lesbian spaces a myth? The aforementioned questions will be explored and analyzed in relation to topics within queer theory, in particular cultures of dissemblance and deviance as resistance. The death of lesbian spaces warrants theoretical exploration due to its lack of integration of gender, sex, desire, class, and race among women who love women.
The death of lesbian spaces is not an issue but a contemporary manifestation of deeply rooted, and problematic, fear. For example MichFest (or The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival), the largest and oldest women’s music festival in the county, had its last festival in August 2015. The circumstances of the rather abrupt end to a cultural staple within feminist and “lesbian” communities, since its formation in 1976, were officially unclear. Unofficially, however, MichFest experienced a large pullout of sponsors and performers in response to mounting tensions over the exclusion of trans women from the festival. Since the removal of a trans woman from the festival in 1991, co-Founder of MichFest, Lisa Vogel, defended (subtly and overtly) the exclusion of trans women at MichFest saying that the festival was a space for “womyn-born womyn” to navigate the unique oppression they experience as “womyn-born womyn”. The support of this policy by TURFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists) and notable national lesbian organizations brought, to mainstream attention, the transphobia still prevalent within lesbian communities . A petition, initiated by Equality Michigan’s former executive director Emily Dievendorf, called for a boycott of MichFest until they agreed to openly admit trans women; unofficially leading to the end of MichFest.
The mythology of the dying lesbian space can be clearly outlined using a quote from the official announcement of the end of MichFest. In the statement Lisa Vogel says, “ Everything you feel on the Land, everything you see – is something of spirit, and love, and passion for female empowerment….for womyn’s community .” MichFest upheld an understanding of the experiences of women as a direct connection to the experiences of being female. Gender and sex are completely different and the refusal, of this space, to evolve along with the community’s consciousness of identity led to its end. The fear of dying lesbian spaces has more to do with a close attachment to a problematic and binary way of articulating the identities of women who desire and/or love women.
Moreover, the “lesbian space” is not dying; rather the language surrounding those spaces has evolved tremendously. When the death of lesbian spaces is discussed, it is often in reference to the greater number of women openly identifying as queer, pan, bi, trans or gender non-conforming. However, the understanding that language and identity are constantly evolving is not a new one among women who love or desire women. In fact, this understanding is goes without saying among black queer women (historically and contemporarily). Depending on which community within the "lesbian" community is asked, the subsequent spaces will differ. Mainstream lesbian spaces have been, recently, white in America. In the early 1900s to the 1950s lesbian spaces were not white but commonly black. Due to early respectability politics (i.e. politics of silence) and black queerness being used as a justification for "separate but equal", mainstream lesbian spaces became increasingly white as did the stereotypical image of lesbianism. Thereby framing the modern lesbian space, often referred to as the “gayborhood " (Atlanta’s beingMidtown and East Atlanta Village), in a White, cis gay lens.
The argument of a dwindling number of lesbian spaces typically speaks of recently white spaces and fails to integrate the historic and modern “lesbian” spaces of women of color in general; especially those of black queer women.
In this paper two concepts from queer theory will be used to analyze the myth of the death of lesbian spaces and its subsequent erasure of black queers, the first being cultures of dissemblance.
The article, “No More Secrets, No More Lies: African American History and Compulsory Heterosexuality” by Matte Udora Richardson, introduces compulsory heterosexuality by introducing Adrienne Rich’s article, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience.” Richardson critiques Rich’s central theory in saying, “Her theory of a lesbian continuum reduces all intimacies between all people identified as women by dominant culture as lesbian, thereby erasing bisexual and transgender experiences, not to mention a host of other identities, bodies, and histories.” This critique of an, arguably, outdated view of identities of women who desire women provided an outline of how cultures of dissemblance work in relation to the “death of lesbian spaces” myth.
Dissemblance, as defined by historian Darlene Clarke Hine, was a method used by black women to, not change their sexual lives, but change how they are documented in history as to avoid intentional contributions to the otherness of Black people in general. Subsequently, cultures of dissemblance were created to justify and uphold this means of survival. These cultures of dissemblance can also be used to analyze the modern day erasure (intentional or not) of black queer women’s spaces from the mainstream “lesbian” space. As the mainstream gay agenda evolved into one of homonormativity, the spaces in which the public interacted with gay and lesbian people were forced to evolve with the overall political agenda. Lesbian spaces, Black ones in particular, were known for celebrating those who lived outside of the norms of their gender and gender roles, in turn removing especially deviant (and conveniently Black) lesbian spaces from the public view made sense. In order to justify the desired (mainstream) historical narrative Black queer women’s spaces, hidden not nonexistent, were and continue to be erased from the dominant discussions of lesbian spaces. If these spaces were considered in the mainstream assessment of lesbian spaces, the concern of dying lesbian spaces would be invalid.
The theory of “deviance as resistance” will be the last topic this paper uses to analyze the myth of the death of lesbians spaces and its inherent erasure of black queerness. The previous section introduced the necessity, from a dominant (white in this case) mainstream “gay” perspective, of the erasure of black queer women’s spaces from the identity of mainstream lesbian spaces. In its conclusion, the aforementioned analysis introduced a possible reason as to why black queer women’s spaces could not fit within the desired homonormative narrative; an inherent unwillingness to conform.
Currently, black lesbian spaces and mainstream lesbian spaces differ in their articulation of identity to the dominant culture. In the paper, "Deviance as Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics." by Cathy J. Cohen, Cohen critiques this in saying, “some queer theorists, and more queer activists, write and act in ways that unfortunately homogenize everything that is publicly identifiable as heterosexual and most that are understood to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender or “queer”.” This, almost obsession, with placing all facets of existence within the LGBT community on a binary simultaneously erases the intersecting experiences of oppression faced by members of the community based on race, class, and gender. Particularly ignoring the possibility of how the intersectionality of black queer (in this case women’s) spaces and their unwillingness to conform could be integral to creating a future radical existence for queer women. This future radical existence would not be in reaction to oppressive norms, but one that has true self-determination.
Deviance as resistance, in relation to the topic of interest, does not imply that Black queer women’s spaces are content with their otherness. Rather it implies that Black queer women refuse to change their identity and its expression for the sake of acceptance into a dominant culture. Therein assuming unwillingness, or deviance, as a form of resistance to political gains acquired using oppressive means. Cohen outlines the ramifications of this by stating “these individuals…not only counter or challenge the presiding normative order…but also create new or counter normative frameworks by which to judge behavior.” Deviance as resistance is a fundamental building block of black queer women’s spaces and outlines their historical and continued erasure in dominant debates on modern “lesbian” community.
In concluding my analysis of the current queer concern with the death of lesbian spaces in relation to black queerness, I find it necessary to insert my relationship with the personal ramifications of this “crisis”.
As a Black queer, femme, woman in Atlanta I recently attended the Trans Rally during the 2015 Atlanta Pride Festival. I say as a Black queer woman because my identity within the LGBTQ community’s yearly celebration of “pride” was made painfully obvious this year. I watched my friends (a black trans woman and a black gender non-conforming femme) speak on the necessity of centering Black trans folks, as press began to circle they began looking for people to take an official photograph. I watched the white photographer move throughout the crowd tapping a number of people they wanted to feature. Satisfied with their selection, the photographer began to (only) take pictures of the selected participants. Realizing all the participants they selected were white, I looked on in anger and sadness. Anger at this photographer’s (a historian of sorts) choice to commemorate the first Trans Rally at Atlanta Pride to be hosted on the main stage with only white attendees. I was saddened that this erasure is a normal occurrence when black queer spaces (and bodies) convene within mainstream gay space.
This erasure was replicated when I overheard a group of white participants at the Atlanta Dyke March say there aren’t any lesbian spaces “like this”. I responded by asking “which lesbian spaces are you talking about?” The utter confusion on her face and her subsequent answer of “What do you mean “which lesbian spaces”?” floored me. The erasure of black queer women’s spaces and the insulting fallacies within the “death of lesbian spaces” debate do not necessitate explanations riddled with academic theory when the proof is just beyond the rainbow.

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Does it matter that Sally Ride , NASA’s first woman in Space was a lesbian? It wasn’t like the diminutive five-foot-five female astronaut was advocating or promoting same-sex lifestyles, or openly grooming young girls to become future female partners. No one outside a very small circle even knew about her sexual proclivities until after her death from pancreatic cancer.
Does it matter that NASA astronaut Lisa Novak was charged with the attempted kidnapping and murder of fellow astronaut William Oefelein’s girlfriend, or that “outed” astronaut Anne McClain was accused of identity theft and “wrongfully attempting to access the bank account” of her estranged wife, Summer Worden ?
In the case of Novak, the charges were pled down to felony burglary and misdemeanor battery, and she was demoted and retired from the Navy under other than honorable circumstances. In the case of McClain, she was exonerated, and Worden was indicted for making false statements.
Astronauts, male or female, are people, and just like everyone else are subject to human foibles and frailties. But still, one would hope that NASA’s selection criteria are designed to minimize the expression of such foibles and frailties within their elite astronaut cadres. Of the tens of thousands of applicants competing for a spot in NASA’s astronaut corps , only a tiny percentage make it, and tax payers have a right to demand that these be “the best of the best.” They have the right to ask just what attributes are being cultivated.
The most recent Astronaut Class, the Class of 2017, drew 18,300 applicants. Of those, 120 were “invited” to NASA’s “Manned” Missions Space Center for four months of “Phase 1” interviews, which eliminated half of the hopefuls. The survivors underwent two months of additional Phase 2 interviews and participated in medical and physical assessments. Medical evaluations were performed by doctors at the Flight Medicine Clinic for the Astronaut Long-Duration Spaceflight Physical, and more hopefuls were eliminated. Phase 3 subjected Phase 2 survivors to “team building activities,” which reduced the field considerably. Only eleven astronauts made the cut: three “white” males, three “minority” males, three “white” females, and two “minority” females.
One would hope that these eleven astronauts, and those that follow, are indeed physically capable and mentally stable team players, unburdened with grievance industry attitude, rainbow elitism, or gender/race privilege. But there are disturbing signs that NASA has employed and is indeed accelerating the prioritization of gender and race to achieve “equity,” instead of focusing on the selection of the best qualified, regardless of sex or color.
Back in March 2019, astronaut Christina Koch was paired with astronaut Anne McClain in the International Space Station (ISS), and scheduled for the “first all-female spacewalk,” as a “fitting ending to Women History Month.” Koch and McClain joined the astronaut corps in 2013, graduating from an astronaut class that was 50 percent female. Even the more diminutive women were trained and certified in medium and large spacesuits, because that was all that NASA has. There are no small, or extra small sizes.
At the time of the spacewalk, the ISS only had one “medium-size spacesuit hard upper torso” and McClain balked at wearing a larger size, even though she’d been certified in one. McClain was returned to Earth and replaced by Jessica Meir (also Class of 2013). NASA tried again in October 2019, and Koch and Meir’s “first spacewalk of an all-women team” made “herstory.”
It might have been for the best. Training or no training, slopping around in over-sized suits makes work in the brutal, inherently dangerous vacuum of Space harder, slower and even more dangerous. If either of the women astronauts had become compromised, exhausted, or injured, their rescue would have placed their male crewmates at unnecessary risk. Just for the sake of a Women History Month First. The moral of this potentially tragic tale is (or should be): “Don’t hire small astronauts until you can build small space suits.”
Last year NASA announced their list of candidates for the Artemis mission : nine male astronauts and nine female astronauts, of which nine are “white,” and nine are “non-white”—a rainbow painted with astro-mathematical precision. Named after Apollo’s female twin, the “ logo ” of the Artemis mission, depicting “Woman on the Moon” is telling: A round medallion portraying “a portrait of the Greek Goddess Artemis illustrated in the highlights and shadows of the crescent Moon,” her features squashed and distorted “so that all women can see themselves in her.”
Of course, it isn’t just astronauts.
Last February, NASA announced the graduates of their new Flight Directors Class of 2021 : three white women, one white male.
In highlighting the “ People Behind NASA’s Perservance Rover , the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) showcased Heather Bottom, Katie Stack Morgan, Moo Stricker, Al Chen, Diana Trujillo, Eric Aguilar, and Michelle Tomey Colizzi. That doesn’t necessarily mean that there were no white males on the team, although white males are a minority at JPL, which boasts demographics of over 51 percent “ethnic minorities,” and 30 percent females. But if there are any white males on the team, they appear to have been canceled for the sake of optics.
Seriously, NASA needs to back away from radical wokeness and turn color blind and gender neutral. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. taxpayer dollars are committed to the selection and training of each and every astronaut. Billions of dollars are expended launching them into space – currently to the ISS, and hopefully, eventually, on to lunar missions and Mars exploration.
And it isn’t just the patent inequality or unfairness of minimizing or even canceling a white male presence from NASA’s astronaut and support staff cadres. The inevitable consequences of allowing bias and preferential HR practices to become institutionalized do not create some Kumbaya community of rainbow brothers and sisters reveling in harmony and unity in Space. Such intolerance cultivates division and feelings of inadequacy among the favored few, and resentment among the least preferred. Painfully aware that their selection was based upon gender or race and not demonstrable skills or superior competencies – the “winners” interact awkwardly with each other, as well as with their white male counterparts, themselves conflicted and compromised by the bewildering persecution.
It’s a lose-lose scenario. White males who buy into the “ally” collective guilt of being “historically privileged” are mentally scarred by a sense of unworthiness and lack of validity. Those who “go along to get along” or feel obliged to fake their way through the indoctrination and screening processes, suppress feelings of outrage and oppression likely to rise to the surface under periods of stress.
White males who buy into the “ally” collective guilt of being “white” and “male” and “historically privileged” will be dogged by a sense of self-doubt and even self-loathing.
These are not dynamics that auger well for the success of long duration missions under claustrophobic conditions in the uncompromising and hostile vacuum of Space.
So, does it matter that NASA feels obliged to gamble on the mental stability and lack of physicality of their candidates if it means they can enhance the optics of inclusion?
has traveled extensively in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and the South Seas – winning hearts and minds in and out of uniform – federal, military, and freelance. Now working exclusively freelance, he is fluent in German and English, with survival skills in French, Haitian Creole, Russian, Standard Arabic, Swahili and Samoan.
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