The older I’ve become the more I’ve understood the French feminist Monique Wittig’s argument that lesbians are not women but another gender (a “third” sex or gender as it is sometimes called) because we exist outside of the heterosexual system, which creates a class (or binary) of men and women.
The behaviour and choices of straight women are increasingly inexplicable to me, likewise the behaviour of bisexual women whose dating life revolves around men. With time I’ve diverged and fallen out with straight friends over their decisions regarding men, and the new friends I make seem to be largely queer, or straight women who don’t centre men in their lives. There are several examples of the latter; both the “girl’s girl” and the “fag hag” are commonly tropes that exist across media and reality. The fag hag in particular can be so entrenched in the queer community as to sometimes be part of it, even when not sexually queer.
My divestment from straight, cis men and manhood generally—though not deliberate and simply a consequence of the fact I am mostly drawn towards other women and gay men for conversation and companionship—is seen as hostile, antagonistic or even man-hating to the partners of straight friends of mine. In reality, I’m not thinking about men very much at all. It’s always been amusing to me that lesbians, often cast as misandrist, are generally indifferent to men. The brand of feminism that claims that “men are trash” usually comes from women who date men and whose lives still revolve around men. (As a side note, trans academic Asa Seresin coined a particularly useful phrase “heteropessimism” to refer to this phenomenon.)
As a queer person who has grown up immersed in straight culture—as do all queer people, given it is the dominant culture—I understand that straight people experience the world differently to me. However, straight people often assume we experience the world in the same way; when I point out how I view it differently, they often see my perspective as an aberration or a threat. In that way, heterosexuality is a one-way looking glass, with straight people constantly having their expectations and desires reflected back at them by the world, whereas queer people are left observing, interrogating the dominant culture. My dad commented recently “If you’re not a girl or a gay you’re invisible to [my daughter]” and I realised, in a moment of hilarity, that he really sees me. My work could be viewed as not only paid access to my body, but paid access to me by people who I wouldn’t normally engage with. My work plays through a financial transaction with the social contract that exists between men and women.
Of course, the use of “third sex” refers most often to trans people, who are socially and historically seen as falling between the socially constructed binary of men and women, along with hijras, brotherboys, sistergirls, fa’afafine and many other non-western groups (who often also identify as trans themselves). By writing this I am not equating my experience to theirs. I find it interesting, though, to think of the ways in which all women who differ from the socially acceptable norm, such as trans women and lesbians, are marked as not-women. Lesbians, for instance, are only accepted as women when fetishised—when either their femininity or sexuality is seen as still accessible to men. Otherwise they become a “dyke”, sitting outside of male desire.
I think of the word “invert”, used by Radclyffe Hall throughout her notorious lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness (1928), as a word that marks otherness, and could be understood to mean—in modern speaking—either or both a homosexual or trans person. And I think of a friend of mine saying, on Christopher Street Day in Berlin: “Isn’t it funny that we are part of an international queer mafia that straight people just don’t know about.” Her statement feels so accurate. Of course I socialise more thoughtlessly and effortlessly with those whose lifestyles, motivations and ways of forming friendship are similar to mine. Straight people—it’s not personal, it's simply incidental.
