RoseBud Magazine

BY RILEY VALENTINE

IMAGEBYRILEYVALENTINE/@AHEARTSHAPEDUTERUS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FRONT OF THE BOOK

PAGES 4 - 11

FEATURED ARTICLES

Why are lesbians still being sexualized? 12

Subtext... But make it sapphic 16

What is the Lesbian Masterdoc? 24

Lesbians on Tinder 28

Note from the Editor:

By Amanda Burris November 29, 2022

“I AM NOT A SPECTACLE TO BEHOLD” A

THE FIRST TIME I QUESTIONED

my sexuality, it was past midnight and I was making the hour-long drive home from my high school job to my house in the middle of nowhere Missouri. I hated making that drive because I was always so tired after an eight-hour or so closing shift, but I did love the time it gave me to think, cry, and listen to music. I’m pretty sure the first time I realized I liked girls I was making that drive and listening to “Sarah Smiles” by Panic! At the Disco.

As anyone who has had to come out knows, there is nothing more isolating than the period before you leave the closet. And for queer women especially, coming to terms with yourself, your sexuality, and your existence as a sexual being comes with a whole other battlefield, as the first exposure most queer people have to lesbianism is it as a fetish.

Before I knew for sure I liked girls, and one of the reasons I think it took me so long to come out, there were some pretty salacious-yet-silly rumors about me that flew around the high school that I went to in the rural area I mentioned above. One of the funniest ones, that I still joke about to this day, is that me and my best friend at the time were dating and that we’d do heroin together and then have crazy, lesbian sex. I still have no idea how that rumor ever came to be because my friend had a longterm boyfriend and we had the personalities of some characters from an after-school special, but I guess there is just something about people who were bred to be hateful and homophobic, as they unfortunately often are in rural America, that gives them a crazy gaydar and an obsession with how queer people have sex.

At the time, we both kind of embraced the rumor. It was funny and made us both seem just a fraction of a bit cooler, which is essential in high school. But now, probably 6 years out from when I first heard about the rumor from some Jesus-freak girl in my choir class who was worried about

us “submitting to the devil” or something, it is so clear to me how hard it is to even just exist as a queer person assigned female at birth, and how it’s near impossible to do so without becoming a fantasy for some straight person to think about.

My argument here though is not that we need to rebuke our existence as sexual beings entirely. Queer people already have issues of being infantilized and portrayed as sexless beings. My argument is that despite this dangerous fetishization that follows us, we need to continue to unabashedly have sex.

By shying away, and living our lives as queer people in the shadows, the community opens itself up to the common idea of a queer person becoming a stereotype or a fetish. I am a firm believer in the idea that to protect the way of life as we know it now, we need to be proud owners of our lifestyle, and be firm with the fact that just because I have sex differently than you does not mean I am a spectacle to behold.

Now, six years out from that honestly hilarious rumor, my friend is now out as bisexual and I am a lesbian. We still do not do heroin or have “crazy, lesbian sex,” and I no longer sit in my car listening to Panic! At the Disco and wondering if I like girls. Now, I sit on the bus, I listen to Phoebe Bridgers, and I look at the girls on the bus and think “wow, they’re pretty,” with no shame.

Inside this magazine, you will find a collection of articles accompanied by photography that was all curated and designed by myself, with artistic consult from my lead photographer and great friend Riley Valentine, and with brainstorming help from my other close friend, Sophia McGaff. I hope the content of this magazine brings the future of the lesbian community a bit more in touch with our culture and our existence so that when I say you have to be an owner of your lifestyle, you know there is a whole army of others with you doing the same thing.

WHEN MELISSA AGREED TO APPEAR ON the December 1993 cover of Deneuve — the magazine’s first celebrity cover girl — the community felt so utterly validated. Talk about a Christmas present!

“I think almost every lesbian in the country knew who Melissa Etheridge was at that time,” says Curve Founding Publisher Franco Stevens. “So to have her agree to be on the cover of Deneuve was like her extending a hand to lift us up with her. After Melissa said yes, it legitimized us in the community and opened the door for other celebrities who were more apprehensive.”

The minute we clapped eyes on Melissa we claimed her as our own. And then we followed everything she did — every lyric, every breath, every move she made. She taught us so much about ourselves in a culture that was blind to us. She taught us how to stand up for ourselves and our beliefs, whether that was animal rights or protecting the environment. How to be in love and have a partnership before samesex marriage was legally recognized. How to have children. And how to live through breast cancer. Melissa did it all with passion and guts on the world’s stage.

She was and is as American as the stars and stripes themselves. Even the straights sat up and took notice. Yes, she had her start in lesbian bars, but there was no denying the broad-appeal of this Grammywinning singer-songwriter and guitarist powerhouse. And there were 15 Grammy nominations to prove it, thank you very much.

Melissa hit lesbian playlists everywhere in 1988 with her self-titled album Melissa Etheridge and those confessional lyrics, those raspy vocals, that passionate folkrock guitar — and that black leather jacket — every lesbian stateside and beyond recognized themselves.

“Bring Me Some Water” told us just how thirsty we were — and had been for years. It was a hit and gave Melissa her first Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female.

In January 1993, Melissa came out publicly at the Triangle Ball, the LGBTQ+ celebration of President Bill Clinton’s inauguration. There she proclaimed, “I’m proud to have been a lesbian all my life.”

The September 1993 release of Yes I Am was her coming out on a scale never previously witnessed. You like me as a

musician — she seemed to say — then you need to like all of me. Melissa was coming out for all of us. Who can forget the power of “I’m the Only One” and “Come to My Window”? Those songs told lesbians everywhere that they and their love were real and powerful.

Curve featured Melissa on the cover six more times and wrote countless articles and news bits over the years. When music writer Kelly McCartney interviewed her for the February 2017 issue, the article referred to Melissa as “our eternally favorite rocker” and “an ever-visible, evervigilant LGBTQ+ icon.” Which is exactly what she is.

“When someone comes up to me and says, ‘Knowing about you saved my life,’ I get that. Or, ‘When I was a teenager you made it possible for me to come out.’ That means everything to me,” Melissa told Curve. “So, if anyone has the chance to do so much in the world just by being themselves — and, in reality, we all have that chance just to come out — I’ve always been honored to represent and to inspire a group of people.”

And oh, how she inspired us!

IMAGE BY OWEN SWEENEY / @APNEWS

By Curve Staff From Curve 2022

NEGRONI SBAGLIATO IS EVERYWHERE

here’s how to make your own ‘mistake’

By Dani Nett From NPR October 11, 2022

MOVE OVER, APEROL SPRITZ. THE REIGN OF negroni sbagliato (pronounced nuh-GROW-nee spah-li’AH-toh) has just begun.

The cocktail — made with Campari, sweet vermouth, and sparkling wine instead of the traditional gin — has taken over social media, thanks to a behind-the-scenes interview promoting House of the Dragon on HBO’s TikTok account.

In the clip, stars Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke — who play the feuding Princess Rhaenyra and Queen Alicent respectively — are asking each other about their drink of choice in real life.

D’Arcy, who’s non-binary, says they prefer a Negroni, before adding “sbagliato” in their signature breathy voice. The actor then raises their eyebrows, leans in closer, and flirtatiously explains that it means “with prosecco in it.”

Cooke responds with an enthralled “Ooh, stunning.”

The interaction immediately went viral, especially among queer fans.

If you want to give the sbagliato a whirl from the comfort of your own home here’s what you’ll need.

The cocktail itself is simple. You’ll need three ingredients: Campari, sweet vermouth and prosecco. Some recipes suggest an equal 1:1:1 ratio, but you may want to adjust to your personal taste.

a quick recipe

A HOME FOR LESBIAN HISTORY

By Jasmine Sudarkasa From Curve October 2021

In this Q&A, Executive Director Jasmine Sudarkasa interviews the Friends of the Lyon-Martin House, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the GLBT Historical Society on their recent collaboration with CyArk to preserve the home of Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin seem to be both highly visible and invisible – known to many within the lesbian community, with burgeoning awareness of their work in the broader LGBTQ+ community, but often overlooked in broader women’s history. Why do you think this is, and how have you seen this play out in the preservation of their home?

Grete Miller, Co-Director for Friends of the Lyon-Martin House: I think when you’re looking at the lives of long-term intersectional activists, such as Phyllis & Del, you realize how broad their service vision was. They were involved in an extensive range of social justice initiatives. They don’t fit into a single issue box. For as much as they’re remembered, they’re also not as visible to people outside of certain communities and generational circles.

That said, when we think about the queer stories and histories that get circulated by mainstream media, the breath of material is concentrated around Stonewall and after. The Homophile organizations that laid the groundwork for the modern-day LGBTQ+ rights movement are typically left out. Sadly, this furthers the erasure of lesbians and queer women who championed the early movement.

As a community, we haven’t been able to document our history and receive the resourcing to preserve our contributions in parity with societal majorities. When you’re not permitted to archive and preserve your history in an inclusive, equitable and accurate way, it’s very difficult to capture and reclaim your story. It hasn’t helped that our stories and representation have often been associated with shame, stigma, and falsehoods, and have been cataloged under

damaging and harmful terminology. There’s ongoing work to change this but we still have a long way to go...

There are many barriers to accessing LGBTQ+ history, especially that of our lesbian foremothers. In the case of LyonMartin House, it was a humble structure that didn’t present many character defining features warranting preservation. Therefore, Friends of Lyon-Martin House and our partners at the GLBT Historical Society, San Francisco Heritage and the National Trust for Historic Preservation built a case to validate that the pioneering work conducted within the home was worth preserving. Thus, saving the house. Like Phyllis & Del, all we needed was a challenge and we succeeded.

“There are many barriers to accessing LGBTQ+ history, especially that of our lesbian foremothers.”

Why preserve their home digitally? Who does this work reach that it might not, otherwise?

Andrew Shaffer, Interim Co-Executive Director, GLBT Historical Society: The Society has been actively preserving stories like these for more than three decades, keeping them safe in our archives for current and future generations who want to learn their history. One thing that we learned clearly from the last year is that we need to make more of our resources available online. Not only in case of a pandemic, but also for the countless people all over the world who are searching for their place in history. They have a right to know their history, and we have an obligation to help them find it.

In addition to our new primary source set about Phyllis and Del’s lives, the digital documentation of their home adds a crucial dimension to our efforts to preserve the legacy of this pioneering couple. Being able to virtually walk through the home where so much history happened is going to make the rest of the materials in our collection that much more powerful.

Lastly – what are the next steps for this project? What are your broader hopes for its visibility?

Chris Morris, Campaign for Where Women Made History, National Trust for Historic Preservation: There has been remarkably rapid progress in just the last few months, with the San Francisco Landmark designation, led by the Friends of Lyon-Martin House, Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, and the GLBT Historical Society, the local and national coverage of that designation bringing attention to the property and its importance, and the partnership with CyArk to do highly detailed digital scans, site photography, and a short documentary. But we are only at the beginning of what is likely to be a long journey since our goal is not merely to protect the house, but to restore and reactivate it as a site for LGBTQ research, advocacy, or activism.

One of the first goals is outreach to the LBGTQ community to hear their ideas and aspirations for the Lyon-Martin House, and their suggestions for potential partner organizations, all of which will inform a plan for the future of the house. Just a few of the ideas that have been suggested so far are an “activist-in-residence” working on LGBTQ policies and issues, a dedicated researcher for the GLBT Historical Society to catalog and interpret the Lyon Martin archives, or affordable, safe housing in partnership with an organization that serves LGBTQ and women victims of violence...

Over the long term we want to pursue designation of the property as a National Historic Landmark. While this is a timeconsuming and costly process, it’s important as a declaration of the national significance of the Lyon-Martin House and its history. Conceptual designs will create a visual representation of the future uses, which we can present to partners, supporters, and funders. Ultimately, we hope it’s possible to acquire the property outright or enter into a long-term lease with the current owner, allowing non-profit organizations to use the house and grounds. But all of these items require time and resources. We need visibility, public support, and funding to make all this work possible.

“We are only at the beginning of a long journey.”

AS A MEMBER OF THE LGBTQ+ COMMUNITY,

there are certain things you quickly grow very tired of hearing. As a lesbian, these often come from cisgender straight men who make disgusting and overtly sexual remarks. I can’t count the number of times a man has told me that he could “turn me straight” or that I “haven’t met the right man yet”. More disgustingly, however, is the far too common response when discovering I’m a lesbian – “can I watch?”

Not only is this just a vile thing to say, but it’s frighteningly common, and sadly something that many lesbians and women loving women (WLW) can relate to. The way lesbians have been sexualized is so frequently perpetuated by the media that it has seamlessly trickled into normal life.

The sexualization of lesbians takes two very distinct paths, both equally as harmful. The first comes from the idea that lesbians are a “challenge” or something to conquer. This has become normalized through the media and songs such as ‘I Kissed a Girl’ by Katy Perry. We’ve all heard the song, it was incredibly popular at the time and I’m sure we all probably know more lyrics than we realize, but in listening to it again recently, I realized the lyrics were more damaging than I remember. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with exploring and discovering your sexuality but lyrics like “I kissed a girl just to try it/hope my boyfriend don’t mind it” are extremely toxic as it suggests that lesbian relationships are just an “experimental game”. The suggestion that cheating on your boyfriend is acceptable as long as it’s with a girl furthers this, hinting that lesbian relationships aren’t as valid or real as straight ones.

Katy Perry’s song was released in 2008, so I suppose it’s easy to say that things have moved on since then and the world is in a different place to what it was. However, a more recent song proves that we still have a massive way to go. Ten years after ‘I Kissed a Girl’, Rita Ora (alongside Charlie XCX, Bebe Rexha, and Cardi B) released ‘Girls’ in 2018, a song that was originally intended to be a bisexual anthem. It was met with massive backlash after listeners believed it too was belittling to the validity of WLW relationships, suggesting that they’re just a phase.

WHY ARE LESBIANS STILL BEING SEXUALIZED?

By Robyn Hill From New Feminist UK August 18, 2021

IMAGE BY RILEY VALENTINE

Cardi B’s rap on this song simply hammers this message home more with lines like, “I could be your lipstick just for one night”. Although Rita Ora came out as bisexual after this song, I don’t think that removes the issues with the content of the song and actually shows how members of the LGBTQ+ community can also be passive towards lesbian issues. Lesbian singer Hayley Kiyoko tweeted that the song, “fuel[s] the male gaze while marginalizing the idea of women loving women” and I have to agree. The song reiterates destructive bisexual stereotypes and reduces WLW relationships to existing only for male pleasure.

This also links to the second strand of the way lesbians are perceived – the fetishization of WLW relationships. This is something so deeply ingrained that it’s spoken about from secondary school ages. I remember sitting in a science lesson listening to some girls recount a party over the weekend. They spoke about how they kissed each other because they knew that the boys they liked would love it. No one batted an eyelid.

It doesn’t take long to think of the root of this mentality or examples of it in the media. The one that comes to mind for me is Joey (and honestly most of the male characters) in Friends. There are countless occasions where the male characters are excited and giddy at the thought of two women kissing, and “lesbian” is frequently used as a punchline. Although Friends aired in the 90’s and early 2000’s, it’s still widely watched today and the fact that these ‘jokes’ that once went straight over my head are still aired in this day and age concerns me. These things have been so painfully normalized that joking about ‘watching’ lesbians isn’t even something to question. What’s even more concerning is that ‘watching’ lesbians isn’t just used for the sake of male-enthused humor, it’s something that actively happens and in excessive amounts.

In 2016, Pornhub announced that “lesbian” was their most searched for term across the entire site, and is their most popular category of all time. Unfortunately, this doesn’t surprise me at all. In this patriarchal society, men, in particular, are raised to believe that women exist simply for the pleasure of men when this of course isn’t true. Part of the rise in this number may also be due to the rise in women watching porn, however, the way men and women watch lesbian porn also takes different forms. According to multiple articles and reports, for women it’s often about the focus on female rather than male pleasure. For men, however, it tends to be more about the fetishization of lesbians and finding WLW inherently sexual. The continuous sexualized male gaze of WLW relationships makes going out into the world as a couple endlessly harder than being straight in public.

What angers me is the unspoken things WLW do to keep ourselves safe in public places, specifically around men. There’s a big difference between homophobic stares and sexualized comments. A horrifying number of women will have experienced street harassment during their lifetime in the form of catcalling. But what can often get

overlooked is that lesbian women receive a whole extra form of harassment that, frankly, is terrifying. I’ve been in two WLW relationships and continue to receive stares when holding my girlfriend’s hand, even in areas close to my home or places I feel safe. There’s the innate question of whether I should let go of her hand. When to look like we’re “just friends”. When men have been staring at us a bit too long or getting a bit too close. Being a lesbian in public means being on constant alert. I’m so sick of feeling like that, and I know almost every LGBTQ+ person feels the same.

Despite the huge progress made in LGBTQ+ rights and representation, there are still groups being left behind. A quick Instagram search for “gay” leads you to various pride accounts and LGBTQ+ resources. The same can be said for “pansexual”, “LGBTQ”, and “asexual”. A search for the word “lesbian” however, leads you to accounts posting lesbian pornography.

I think that alone shows just how much work we have left to do.

“These things have been so painfully normalized that joking about ‘watching’ lesbians isn’t even something to question.”

By Grace Lemon From Seen + Heard

SUBTEXT... BUT MAKE IT SAPPHIC

QUEER REPRESENTATION IS AN

incredibly nuanced topic, especially when we reflect upon what should be considered authentic representation and think about the countless examples in which this representation has perpetuated negative associations with the queer community. Does art have to be explicitly queer for it to be a valid form of representation? Can we consider something to be queer representation so long as it holds value to its queer audience? Does a queer person interpreting something as queer make it true representation?

Storytelling has always been intrinsically tied to songwriting, but more and more of that storytelling has been blurring gender lines and obscuring the difference of perspective between singer and narrator. Four female music artists in particular - Taylor Swift, Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers, and Katie Gavin of MUNAhave each written and released music in which they gender-swap, avoid the use of gendered pronouns, or simply radiate sapphic energy. Within this group, there are different levels of queerness: Taylor Swift identifies as straight, Mitski has vaguely alluded to the fact that she is queer, Phoebe Bridgers is bisexual, and MUNA is a self-proclaimed queer trio. What these artists have in common, however, is that they are part of a growing trend toward disrupting hetero/heterosexist assumptions in songs.

Each of these artists is very decentered in their works, their music both highly personal and highly ambiguous. This decentralization, and subsequent distance between the art and the artist, leaves space for listeners to project and make their own meanings.

TAYLOR SWIFT

Even the most mainstream reviews of Taylor Swift’s folklore admit that the album is at least a little bit gay, despite Swift publicly identifying as straight. The cover art alone is very cottage-core, an aesthetic subculture that has become almost interchangeable with queerness and is more specifically interpreted as highly sapphic. Also, in the words of one of my friends, the decision to style the album in all lowercase is a very gay “paradigm shift.” And, even if they don’t directly acknowledge this, reviewers at the very least recognize that there’s a lot of blurring between fiction and reality in the ambiguously subjected tracks. This leaves room for interpretation when it comes to deciding who the songs are actually about, and who is actually narrating them. Even Taylor Swift herself, in an Instagram post describing the album, commented that “The lines between fantasy and reality blur and the boundaries between truth and fiction become almost indiscernible.” Therefore, queer claiming of this album seems to be largely respected, and even backed up, by even the most dominant and established perspectives.

Taylor Swift is a lyrical master when it comes to weaving subtle references throughout her songs, and the love triangle represented in the songs “cardigan,” “august,” and “betty” is rife with allusions that could be interpreted as queer. The three tracks outline the

relationship between James (who Swift has said is a teenage boy), Betty (who James cheats on), and another unnamed female character (who James cheats with). There is a lot of speculation surrounding the real gender of James, especially since Taylor Swift was named after James Taylor and all three named characters in the arc (James, Betty, and Inez) are references to the three daughters of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. The three tracks are also completely devoid of any male pronouns. Most notably, perhaps, for the sake of queer canon in the music, is the lyric “high heels on cobblestones” in “cardigan” paired with “I was walking home on broken cobblestones” from the perspective of James in “betty.” There seems to be a sort of gender-bending here in which the same person (James) is walking on cobblestones in each song, the high-heels coding feminine.

What is truly special about this album, however, is the way in which Taylor Swift lyrically captures the essence of the queer experience and tropes recognizable to a sapphic audience, not just the ways in which we can try to decipher the explicit presence of lesbian representation. This is instantly revealed in the opening track, titled “the 1,” with Swift singing about a “chosen family,” which we know as a common term for queer people who create their own space of belonging when their families are not accepting of their identities. In “seven,” this is found in the lyrics, “And I think you should come live with me… / Then you won’t have to cry / Or hide in the closet,” which, again, is obviously a widely known expression for

keeping your sexuality a secret. “illicit affairs” describes hidden yearning and private intimacy with lyrics like “stolen stares” and “you taught me a secret language I can’t speak with anyone else.” “betty,” on the other hand, perfectly encapsulates the public pressures of queer relationships when James asks Betty if, when they showed up at her party, “Would you tell me to go fuck myself / or lead me to the garden?” The garden, intimate and private, is where James believes that Betty will finally be able to trust them again. Each of these songs has a more obvious meaning (a failed relationship, childhood abuse, infidelity, and a high school breakup, respectively), but underneath the surface there is a lot of room for queer readings.

Here, I feel that it’s important to reiterate that this album in no way proves, or should be used in an effort to prove, that Taylor Swift herself is queer. For the past several years, rumors have been circling about Swift’s sexuality, with detailed timelines and analyses of her relationships with celebrities like model Karlie Kloss and actress Dianna Agron being cited as evidence that she has dated women. Not only is this incredibly intrusive and an absolute invasion of privacy, but it also literally doesn’t matter. Listeners can and should project their desires and experiences onto the art, not the artist, and in turn map queerness onto the songs, not the singer. There’s nothing wrong with viewing this album through a queer lens, especially since the entire premise of folklore is creating stories that transcend Swift’s own personal experiences. Where this goes too far, however, is when we ascribe this lens to a real-life person who has denied it on multiple occasions.

All things considered, folklore definitely seems to be an album for queer listeners to find themselves in. For the first time in Swift’s eight-album career, folklore is

“SEVEN” BY TAYLOR SWIFT

“and i think you should come live with me… Then you won’t have to cry or hide in the closet.”

completely absent of a single pop song, and is therefore not catered toward a traditional pop audience. This raises the question of whether or not the creation of less mainstream music is inherently more inclusive to marginalized groups who have often been excluded from the popular narrative, which centers on hetero love songs. Swift expertly intertwines fictional, historical, and personal stories within the scope of the entire album and within the space of single tracks, and many of these stories connect to the queer experience and allow queer listeners to feel heard.

The subtlety and honesty of folklore is also a significant shift away from tracks like “You Need to Calm Down,” a song that was obviously created for a queer audience and placed Swift herself at the heart of queer activism, adopting queer symbols for seemingly aesthetic purposes and taking space away from queer voices. With folklore, Swift takes a step back, and a queer audience naturally fits into the narrative instead of being forced into the background as Swift stands center stage. This is further developed through the fact that so much of this album is ambiguous, unlike past Taylor Swift songs that were so highly personal and specific.

In this album, there is enough left unsaid that queer listeners can put themselves into the stories, identifying with and deconstructing the emotions for themselves. Although Taylor Swift has a long way to go in terms of ally-ship and activism, her move away from strictly heteronormative love stories into a more inclusive space that a wider (read: queerer) audience can connect to is definitely notable.

IMAGE BY KEVIN WINTER / @GETTYIMAGES

PHOEBE BRIDGERS

Phoebe Bridgers is an openly bisexual, indie-rock musician whose music, in all of its magical realism and highly specific imagery, somehow articulates unspoken truths about being a queer woman. She has said that a lot of her writing inspiration for Punisher, her most recent album, comes from the book Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, a queer female author. The top comment of the music video for her most popular song “Motion Sickness,” which is actually about her emotional abuse at the hands of male singer-songwriter Ryan Adams, is simply, “hello LGBT community.” Other comments include, but are in no way limited to, “cute, talented girl in a suit?! My gayness is QUAKING” and “im gay for this look.” Hidden within these funny statements of lesbian desire are emotional, intimate confessions: female fans express doubts about their sexualities, share stories of their unrequited crushes on other women, and create an almost collaborative diary of the queer female experience. Although the song is in no way explicitly WLW, there is something so distinctly and indescribably sapphic about the ethereal vocals

IMAGE BY BRAD TORCHIA / @WONDERLAND

and devastatingly poetic lyrics. And, of course, about Phoebe Bridgers in a suit. It has even inspired a viral WLW TikTok dance trend created by a they/she lesbian creator, with a self-identified subculture of “Phoebe Bridgers lesbians.”

More recently, Bridgers combined forces with British pop-rock band The 1975 on the track “Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America,” the fifth single off their 2020 album. Where “Motion Sickness” lacked explicit queerness, this song centers it, with Bridgers singing the lyrics “I’m in love with the girl next door / Her name’s Claire / Nice when she comes ‘round to call / Then masturbate the second she’s not there.” Obviously inspired by the haunting, stripped-down quality that Bridgers brings to so much of her own music, this song has a deeply intimate focus on soft vocals and an acoustic guitar. Bridgers’ verse alongside Healy’s, in which the narrator reveals, “I’m in love with a boy I know / But that’s a feeling I can never show,” captures the heartbreaking experience of queer identity conflicting with religious beliefs, a conflict that so many people live with every day.

Although both Bridgers and Healy are playing characters, singing from fictional perspectives, they speak beautifully to the comfort of believing in something, but the hollowness felt when what you believe in forces you to reject your authentic self.

Perhaps the most notorious example of true queer representation found in Bridgers’ discography is in her covers of songs by male artists, originally describing heterosexual love but completely shifting to express love or sexuality for women and by women when Bridgers assumes the role of narrator. In fact, just last month Bridgers released a cover of 1973’s “If We Make It Through December” by male country artist Merle Haggard, changing the phrase “daddy’s girl” to “my girl” and completely queering the original narrative. Her 2017 debut album, Stranger in the Alps, features a cover of “It’ll All Work Out” by Tom Petty. A couple of years ago, the singer-songwriter also shared a cover of “Teenage Dirtbag” by Wheatus in which she didn’t change any pronouns, and, as a YouTube comment perfectly sums it up: “went from incel energy to yearning WLW, gotta love it.” Along with her recent collaboration with the 1975, Bridgers has also covered their song “Girls,” which is about exactly what it sounds like: girls.

Phoebe Bridgers is cathartic, earnest, and raw. Her non-normative music and form of storytelling completely stray away from the cis-hetero patriarchal mainstream, inviting queer listeners to connect with her songs.

would do anything, whatever she wants.”

“GRACLAND TOO” BY PHOEBE BRIDGERS

“i

MITSKI

Although Japanese-American singersongwriter Mitski has never defined her sexuality in any concrete terms, the indie rock artist is pretty open about the fact that she is queer, tweeting in 2016 that “I’m a Libra so my sexuality is essentially ‘you can be any gender as long as you treat me like a princess.’” Mitski’s music has unmistakable sapphic energy, lyrically articulating a desperate yearning that has earned her a cult following among WLW fans. Of course, yearning is not exclusive to WLW, but it is so centered in the WLW experience that “lesbian yearning” could practically be considered its own unique category, with Mitski’s music as the anthem for this feeling. Just to give you an understanding of the extent to which Mitski’s music is coded as queer, her song “Francis Forever” was covered in an episode of Adventure Time by the (now canonically queer) character Marceline. During her performance, she loses her guitar pick and cannot continue until Princess Bubblegum, who she eventually falls in love with, finds it for her.

Mitski’s music was chosen as the backdrop for this scene of blossoming female love for an obvious reason. Sapphic tropes spill from the lyrics in so many of her songs. “Old Friend,” which is written from Mitski to an ex using the second person “you” and avoiding any gendered pronouns, has such a heartbreaking desperation in its long, breathy vocals. There is a distinctly queer quality to the lyrics “I haven’t told anyone / Just like we promised / Have you?”, implying that there was some reason to keep the relationship a secret, which of course resonates with listeners who have had to hide their sexualities. “I Will” is two minutes and 54 seconds of unconditional, unbridled yearning, with Mitski practically begging “So stay with me / Hold my hand / There’s no need / To be brave.”

In interviews, Mitski has actually said that this song is about things she wishes someone would say to her, making it all the more of a hopeless cry for love. The

soft repetition of the lyrics “I love you” in “Pink in the Night” carries a similar feeling of desperate longing. There’s also a wonderful WLW comic with nearly 400k likes on Twitter that was inspired by this song.

There’s something so refreshing and honest about an artist who is still growing and discovering herself, remaining ambiguous about her identity in a way that allows for the portrayal of such a universal array of emotions. There is empowerment in this insecurity. One of my favorite discourses among WLW fans on social media surrounds which Mitski songs they interpret as the most sapphic. Although there are some agreements, a lot of the discussion is about unique experiences and individual opinions. It is not about which songs people believe are truly about women, but which songs they identify with the most.

“FRANCIS FOREVER” BY MITSKI

“i don’t think i could stand to be where you don’t see me.”

OF COURSE, THERE IS STILL A long way to go in terms of queer representation in the music industry, and we should definitely continue to elevate unambiguous forms of inclusion and seek out music by and for queer artists. That being said, there is something so intimate and emotional about the little bits of subtext that each of these artists captures beautifully. The natural breakdown of automatically assumed heterosexuality, even in songs by straight

artists, is making music in general more inclusive to queer groups, not just music that is designed specifically for queer listeners. Similarly, queer musicians no longer have to be defined by their queerness; they can just be talented musicians that happen to be queer. I’m not even sure what exactly makes each of these songs so glaringly sapphic, but what matters is that they speak to queer women, offering a space of healing and understanding.

MUNA

MUNA, a queer pop band composed of singer Katie Gavin, guitarist Josette Maskin, and producer/guitarist Naomi McPherson, is unique in their conscious decision to make their music free of any gendered pronouns. Gavin, the main lyricist of the group, started this as an accident; as someone who had dated both guys and girls, she felt that her songs never told the full story unless they were written using the second person “you.” What began as a quick fix for a writing dilemma quickly turned into something that made their music more inclusive to fans of all genders and sexualities. Their most popular song, “I Know a Place,” is an ode to people who have felt unsafe or unwelcome based on their sexuality, encouraging love and acceptance.

Unlike some of the other artists in this article, MUNA is stylistically unique in their pop focus, which has been compared to that of more mainstream artists like Avril Lavigne and Robyn. In this way, they are a disruption to the heteronormativity that has dominated popular media for so long. They share the queer experience through the most popular music form that exists, bringing queerness into a space that it was excluded from for so long. With their mission defined as “connection,” MUNA works to use music to promote social change.

IMAGE BY ISAAC SCHNEIDER / @WHEREISMUNA

IMAGE BY RODRIGO CURI / @UNSPLASH

By Michelle Santiago Cortés From The Cut June 24, 2022

EARLIER THIS YEAR, JAZELLE FOSTER, 32, realized she was a lesbian. Her coming-out story is worth telling because it’s so ordinary: She always thought women were hot and kissable, but she was too busy dating men to do anything about it. While she enjoyed dating men, she dreaded what felt like an inevitable future of marrying one. The quarantine period of 2020 inspired her to start dating women exclusively, and by the end of 2021, she had come out on TikTok as a “baby gay” and began to document her queer infancy for her growing audience of followers. In March, she returned to TikTok with a question: “How do I know if I’m bi, lesbian, or pan?”

She was sent a bunch of resources from followers — including YouTube channels and other TikTok videos — but one resource stood out as being the most recommended and most helpful: the “Lesbian Masterdoc.”

The Lesbian Masterdoc is a 30-page document (once a Google doc, now a PDF hosted on various websites, passed around on Reddit threads and comment sections) originally written by Tumblr user Anjeli Luz in 2018 when she was still a teenager coming to terms with her own sexuality. First posted on Tumblr, the doc is very much a product of the platform’s pre-porn-ban heyday, with long (and endearing) asides about crushing on fictional or celebrity men, erotic fanfiction lingo, and mentions of crushing on Kim Possible’s Shego. “I created the document as a tool of self-reflection for myself and others,” Luz told Vice in 2020. The document has 20 sections, including one about “Early interest in women” and a handy one titled “You might be a lesbian if TL;DR.” At the end, her “Credit” section lists a handful of other Tumblr accounts that influenced the writing. Reading it now, the doc feels like an “Am I a Lesbian?” BuzzFeed quiz. It presents you with a series of thoughts and experiences the creator had concluded are common among lesbians. If you relate, you might be a lesbian.

In the end, it took two days to compile, and while Luz took into account the shared experiences of many lesbians in her corner of the internet, it’s primarily based on her personal experience. Luz did not set out to write a canonical text, but she did.

The doc’s ability to “answer” what can in some cases feel like a troubling question — Am I a lesbian? — has earned its reputation as both a sacred text and a crystal ball. There are just as many TikTok’s praising the doc’s clarifying ability as there are TikTok’s about

avoiding its world-rocking clairvoyance, as if getting too close could undo your whole world. But if you’re confused about your sexuality, maybe that undoing is welcome, especially on the internet.

Lockdown made a lot of people gay. Or, to put it more delicately: There is no shortage of first-person accounts of people who, during the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020, realized they were in some way queer. Some credit the time spent away from the general population, while others credit all the time they spent on TikTok. According to Google Trends, search interest for the Lesbian Masterdoc has been spiking since 2020, and now #lesbianmasterdoc has over 14 million views on TikTok.

When Foster got a hold of the Lesbian Masterdoc, it was a revelation: “So many of the things in that doc rang true to me, it was crazy.” She thought, “If this is true, everybody is lesbian.”

Foster shared some of her favorite lines from the doc on TikTok in a game of “Put a Finger Down.” She begins, “Put a finger down if you wish you were a lesbian so you could escape the discomfort of dating men.” Put a finger down if “men are okay in theory but terrible in practice.” Put a finger down if “you feel like you could live with a woman in a romantic way even if you can’t imagine doing anything sexual with a woman.” Put a finger down if “you know that there are lesbians, but you can’t possibly be a lesbian because you would already know.” The comments read exactly as you’d expect. As one commenter said, “I have no more fingers to put down.” Another wrote, “Flashbacks to the first time I read the doc and realized I checked. every. box.” Yes, it’s silly — albeit irresistible — but not every page is as flip.

Page one of the Masterdoc introduces readers to the concept of compulsory heterosexuality, a term poet and feminist Adrienne Rich coined in her 1980 essay, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Existence.” Rich wanted to challenge contemporary feminists on their assumption that attraction to men was a natural feminine predisposition, and she invited them to think of heterosexuality as a political institution that, as the term implies, is imposed on people. In the Masterdoc (which doesn’t mention Rich), compulsory heterosexuality, or comphet, is something to unpack and unlearn as readers attempt to make sense of their sexualities. It reads, “Compulsory heterosexuality is the voice in my head that

says I must really be het even when I’m in love with a woman.”

Today, the term is following “male gaze” and the Bechdel Test as terms originally created to talk about representations of women in media that popular internet usage has decontextualized. Online, budding feminists question if they’re “dressing for the male gaze” or if their real-life conversations pass the Bechdel Test. Comphet is similarly described in the Masterdoc as something to name, eradicate, and heal from. On TikTok, videos using #comphet have collected over 127.2 million views.

settle for just surviving).” It all sounds like a catalyst for the kind of life-crumbling queer awakening you see on TV, but all Sarah could think was, “Duh!”

“I think the first time I read it, I laughed out loud,” she says, adding that she majored in women and gender studies in college. “How the fuck did I not ever think of this stuff before?”

The kind of affirming and revelatory reading experience so many Masterdoc evangelists have is what the internet runs on: a feeling of being understood and seen often denied off-line. Sarah wishes she’d read it sooner, and when one of her bisexual friends found herself at a similar crossroads, she sent her the doc but prefaced it by saying, “Hey, this is actually about being a lesbian, being Sapphic. It may not all apply to you, but some of these things about trying to figure out if you are actually attracted to women might be helpful.”

doc’s ability to ‘answer’ what can in some cases feel like a troubling question —

Sarah, who asked to not be identified by her real name, learned about the Masterdoc in 2019, probably on Reddit, when she was in the throes of divorcing her husband. “The Masterdoc was trying to help me understand what happened,” she says, and “why I let myself get stuck in a really toxic, straight relationship for so long.” She is now 36, and despite always knowing she was queer and having a robust dating history of sleeping with and dating people who weren’t cis men.

She read the line that was most important for her from the doc to me: “You think that because you could survive dating, marrying, and/or having sex with a man, you’re attracted to men (hint: you don’t have to

But not everyone is as considerate. Sometimes people are introduced to the doc not because they have questions but because someone else thinks they should. Crystal, who’s real name is not actually Crystal, is confidently bisexual, but in 2020, someone sent her the doc anyway. “I just brushed it off,” she says. “But it did hurt my feelings a bit.” It made her feel confused — “but not about my sexuality, more just like, Why am I reading this right now? This is useless to me.” It was invalidating.

She looked around Twitter to see if there were any open discussions of the doc and found that open criticism of it was met with the kind of hostility fandoms reserve for their fave’s antis. She shared her thoughts on the doc on Twitter and talked about how she didn’t think it was funny or helpful to send it to someone unsolicited. “And that created a whole shitstorm for me that year. I had to get off Twitter for a few days.”

Stefanie Duguay is an assistant professor at Concordia College’s Department of Communication Studies, and her research has given her insights on how queer people use and experience digital-media technologies. She remembers the Masterdoc from her

“The

Am I a lesbian? — has earned its reputation as both a sacred text and a crystal ball.”

Tumblr days but took a closer look at it ahead of our call. “For decades,” Duguay explains, “the internet has been the key hub for queer people reflecting on what it is to be queer and generating information for themselves and for each other.” The doc is like a zine, a self-published project that moves through a subculture, making complicated academic principles more accessible.

“I can see how a document like this could be useful for people to pass around,” she adds, “but even more useful if you can have a conversation about it and if you can bring in a lot of different perspectives — if you could talk about the origin, the author, people’s different lived experiences in relationship to it.” The doc should be criticized not because it’s bad but because the “it” is important.

The Lesbian Masterdoc talks about identifying “common signs” of compulsory sexuality and experiencing “the symptoms of comphet.” By centering personal healing, comphet puts psychology over politics. Duguay explains that Rich’s compulsory heterosexuality is about systems and how society at large is organized. And while it does affect us all individually, the way in which it’s popularly talked about online overemphasizes the individual, and “making it an individual problem is not going to invoke change at these bigger societal levels.”

Because the Lesbian Masterdoc is often treated as the definitive guide for how to know if you’re a lesbian, it’s easy to forget it’s just a regular person’s noble attempt to make sense of her experience and share it online. And while it has helped so many people make

sense of their experiences, and may feel like the only resource of its kind, it isn’t. It doesn’t have to be.

“I mean, not to disrespect the doc,” Sarah adds, “but there’s a whole hundreds of years of history of queer people and lesbian thought,” noting that she also read Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues and Chelsea Girls by Eileen Myles. On Reddit, one user shared a “trans version of the Lesbian Masterdoc,” and slowly but surely, healthy criticism of the doc is starting to bloom on Reddit, TikTok, and Twitter. Crystal recently re-shared her critical thoughts of the Masterdoc on Twitter, and the response wasn’t nearly as hostile as she remembered, “so maybe the online perception of it is changing.”

It was never about the Masterdoc anyway. It was always about how people like creator Anjeli Luz understood their experience to be connected to something bigger than themselves and saw value in sharing that. For some, the actual substance of the doc is less important than the journeys it kick-started for them. “Even if there’s something in here that’s not true or can’t be backed up in some way,” Foster admits, “the conversations that it forced me to have with myself haven’t come from anywhere else.” The Masterdoc relays one of the most valuable lessons about queerness: There is hope in wanting more, and you’re never alone in wanting to seek it.

IMAGE BY NORBU GYACHUNG / @UNSPLASH

By Mary Emily O’Hara

From NBC News September 2, 2022

LOOKING FOR LOVE ON TINDER? LESBIANS MUST FIRST SWIPE PAST A PARADE OF STRAIGHT MEN

ILLUSTRATION BY AMANDA BURRIS / @AMANDABURRISDESIGN

I’VE BEEN SINGLE SINCE MY LAST relationship ended in February, and like many single lesbians, that means I’m back on Tinder. The dating app provides a way to expand my dating pool beyond the usual crop of friends, exes and friends of exes. But I had forgotten what it’s like to be a lesbian on America’s most popular dating app; in order to find dates, I have to wade through a veritable thicket of opposite-sex couples and cisgender men.

But why do men pop up in my feed of potential matches when my account is set to see women-identified profiles only? Anecdotally, I know I’m hardly alone — queer women and non-binary folks have spent years puzzling over the men that somehow slip through our Tinder settings. Yes, there are other dating apps, but Tinder is the one I’ve used the most, and the only one where I’ve had this happen consistently. And I want it to be very clear that my discomfort on Tinder isn’t based in any kind of TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist) ideology; I date trans and nonbinary people as well as cisgender women. But I don’t date straight, cisgender men or straight couples. To be honest, it creeps me out to know that men can see my profile (after all, Tinder is a two-way street). As a femme lesbian who is often mistaken for straight, I get enough unwanted attention from men. I shouldn’t have to market myself to them as a potential date when I very, very much don’t want to.

Being a generally curious journalist, I set out to solve the mystery. In July, I deleted

my Tinder account and signed back up on the platform for an entirely fresh start. This was the only way to be absolutely sure I’d checked off all the settings properly, to rule out any mistakes on my end. While creating a new account, the app asked me to choose a gender (male or female were the only options and I chose female) and a sexual orientation (you could pick three; I went with lesbian, queer, and gay).

I reached a mildly confusing page that allowed me to pick a second gender identity (non-binary) and asked whether I wanted to be included in searches for men or women (I chose women). In settings, I was asked whether I wanted to be shown women, men, or everyone (I chose women, and clicked a button that said “show me people of the same orientation first” in order to hopefully weed out straight women and get right to my fellow queers). With all of these settings carefully selected, I figured I was in the clear.

I was wrong. I swiped left for days on opposite-sex couples preying on bisexual women and encountered numerous profiles for — you guessed it — straight, cisgender men. I would estimate that at least half of the profiles shown to me by the app were either couples or men: a shockingly high amount. Intrigued (and because I was working on this story), I began to swipe right on men and couples. I realized that most or all of these profiles had apparently already seen me; every time I swiped right on a cisgender man, it was an instant match. I was in their pool, like it or not. Creepy.

I’m in my 40s, which means I spent a

Queer women and non-binary folks have spent many frustrating years puzzling over the men that somehow slip through our Tinder settings.

good part of my youth in the lesbian bars of the U.S. that have largely disappeared. Encountering men and straight-ish couples in lesbian spaces is an all-too-familiar experience for me. Back in the bar days, men who hung around lesbian bars were referred to as “sharks” because of the way they seemed to circle drunk or lonely prey. Though some bars refused to let them in, other lesbian bars simply charged male patrons high door fees to make them pay for the privilege of gawking and stalking.

As a young femme dyke with long hair and painted fingernails, I hated having to navigate these encounters in what were supposed to be

The lesbian world can feel tiny; while there is no reliable data on the number of LGBTQ people in the U.S. (we aren’t counted by the U.S. Census), a 2016 Gallup poll estimated that about 4 percent of American women identified as either lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender — meaning the numbers in each sub-group are smaller. And many in my community consistently struggle to meet potential dates that don’t already overlap with their social circles.

A 2016 study conducted by researchers from Queen Mary University of London, Sapienza University of Rome and the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group found that while 12 percent

rare safe spaces. Coming to the bar to flirt with girls and trans guys, I didn’t want to have to feel the eyes of a straight man on me all night. It’s bad enough that feminine-looking women are so often mistaken for straight women, a phenomenon known as femme invisibility. Lesbian bars were supposed to be the one place where, just by entering the room, my queerness was undeniable.

Today, the lesbian bars of yore have mostly shut down. Queer women (and their adjacent populations: non-binary folks and trans men) now meet each other mostly through dating apps and other platforms like the wildly popular Instagram account Personals. While Personals is launching its own app (currently in Beta testing), the app for queer women that seems to have attracted the most mainstream traction is HER. With limited options, queer women tend to scatter seeds across multiple platforms; I’ve known friends to use Tinder, HER, Bumble, and OK Cupid all at once while perusing the Personals feed too.

of male Tinder profiles identified users as gay or bisexual, only 0.01 percent of women’s profiles identified users as anything other than straight.

Though three years have since passed, I’m not convinced the numbers have significantly increased. In the weeks since restarting my Tinder profile, I’ve swiped until there are no new matches to swipe several times (I used the app in different cities while traveling).This sense of scarcity makes it all the more frustrating to encounter people you have no interest in dating.

Matching with men and couples would normally be annoying, but it was useful for this article. I messaged several couples to ask why they marked the gender of their profile as “woman,” and whether they were aware that creating an account as a couple violates Tinder’s “One Person, One Account” rule, which says “Tinder accounts cannot have multiple owners, so don’t create an account with your friend or significant other.” Not a single one of the couples responded. But some of the men I matched with did offer helpful feedback. When I asked

“I know I’m hardly alone — queer women and nonbinary folks have spent years puzzling over the men that somehow slip through our Tinder settings.”

“Harry,” who declined to be quoted outright for this story, whether he’d mistakenly set his gender to female, he said he had not.

He claimed he was a straight man looking to date women and wasn’t sure why he’d shown up in my feed. But then he said something surprising: men also show up in his feed, even though his profile was set to seek women. Other men I matched with had clearly stated their gender as male right on their profile.

To be clear, none of these men seemed to be transgender; in my experience as a person who has dated trans people, the majority of trans folks do identify themselves as such on dating apps.

I knew that most of my friends had encountered men and couples, but I also decided to ask my 16,000 Twitter followers in hopes of gathering a random sample. I got about 20 quotable responses from queer women, all of whom said they’ve encountered straight cis men in their Tinder feed and had puzzled over it. Many — including bisexual women — also expressed annoyance at couples who use the app to fish for queer women for threesomes.

“I only set to women. My results are an easy 40 percent straight couples looking for a unicorn or whatever. It disgusts me,” said Sara Gregory in response to the Twitter prompt. “Also would estimate about 10 percent of profiles I see are cis men when set to only women.”

“My settings are set to only show me women, but I still see men almost every time I log in,” said Mari Brighe on Twitter. “Also, it seems like there are AT LEAST as many unicorn-hunting

couples profiles as queer women’s profiles. It’s ridiculously frustrating.”

Conspiracy theories have proliferated, with some queer women guessing straight men are switching their genders to try to pick up lesbians. Or maybe some guys are just too dumb to properly set up a dating profile.

So was this the result of men misusing the platform? Was it a bug? Was it a feature? Over the course of three separate phone calls with Tinder representatives who spoke exclusively on background, I was repeatedly assured that what I described was nearly impossible. The conversations left me feeling even more confused and frustrated. Tinder wasn’t purposefully blocking me, but neither did it seem like the app understood why the onslaught of men and couples makes queer women so uncomfortable, or how the rampant sexualization of lesbians that can turn predatory and dangerous at times.

In the end, Tinder gave me a statement on the record that framed the whole thing as an inclusion issue.

“Tinder is the most used app by LGBTQ women and we are proud to serve this community. Inclusion is a core value and we are constantly working to optimize the user experience,” said a Tinder spokesperson. “We have identified that, sometimes, users may either purposely or inadvertently change their gender and consequently, are shown to users seeking other matches. The only way to prevent this from happening would be to restrict users from changing their gender, which is not a product change we are willing to make.”

“I’ve

IMAGE BY RILEY VALENTINE / @AHEARTSHAPEDUTERUS