Gay woman, no. I’m a lesbian!

August is Lesbian Visibility Month and we need to talk about the word LESBIAN🇧🇷 We talk so much about being proud of who we are and about the importance of activism, but we still see SO MUCH prejudice with the word lesbian and there’s hardly anyone talking about it.

Did you know that the L is so invisible that, in 2008, it was placed in front of the acronym so that the letter would be more remembered? It used to be GLBT. But I believe that this has not helped so much, because the word lesbian it is still too marginalized, including by the women of the acronym themselves.

“It’s not prejudice, the word itself is ugly, sounds like something technical, while gay is a short word, uplifting, happy”, “lesbian is ugly, it sounds like vomiting”, “lesbian is too heavy, I prefer gay ”. These phrases, among thousands of others, I’ve heard coming from women who relate to women.

Lesbians themselves make the power of the word invisible, as many think that what defines them is a word that, in fact, concerns men who relate to men. And it’s super important to remember that the letter G is already extremely privileged and has infinitely greater visibility in everything. This is yet another proof of how machismo is rooted in our society and we NEED to reframe the word lesbian🇧🇷 It is still necessary to reaffirm our existence and, then, we will manage to be increasingly respected for being who we are.

By the way, the story of the word is incredible and deserves to be always told: Sappho was a poet who lived on the island of Lesbos, in Greece, during the 6th century BC – and she was a lesbian. She wrote poems for the women she loved and was extremely frowned upon because of it. Even today, only a few fragments of these poems of hers exist, because they were destroyed and many ended up being “heterosexualized”-rewritten as if it were Sappho writing to a man.

Finally, if you’re straight and have a lesbian friend, don’t say she’s gay. If you are a lesbian woman, think about the struggle it took to get here and how much more we still need to get where we want to be – and the power of a word that can make us go much further.

* Lela Gomes defines herself as a “dyke who fights”. She is the creator of Boleia Bar, in Rio de Janeiro, and runs the Podcastão podcast. On Instagram, you can follow her through the profile @lelagomes.