Being a woman, being a woman in a patriarchal society, being a homosexual woman in feudal society such as ours---imagine what lesbians live through?
"Lesbian" is literally 1. a native or resident of Lesbos, an island of Greece. 2. the Ancient Greek dialect of Lesbos, belonging to Aeolic, used in the lyric poetry of Sappho or Alcaeus. [Groiler International Dictionary, Vol. 1]
In the 50s to the 70s, radical gays preferred to the term homophile, meaning love of same, over homosexual because their relationships go beyond sexual intercourse.
In the vernacular lesbian is tomboy, tibo, pogi, magic, bianang, etc.---all of which carry slightly derogatory to outright ridiculous connotations. In English, lesbian is synonymous to homosexual or gay to the more specific dyke or butch. A dyke believes herself to be pseudo- if not totally male while a butch is generally boyish or mannish.
‘Dyke’ is a different put-down from ‘faggot’ although both are implying you are not playing your socially assigned role and not therefore a ‘real woman’ or a ‘real man’ Lesbian is the word, the label, the condition that holds women in line. When a woman hears this word tossed her way, she knows she is stepping out of line. ["The Woman-Identified Woman", Ms. Magazine. 1970]
To truly understand the lesbian is to demythify her. She is not just the waray-waray character of Nida Blanca, or a boyish young lady who eventually falls in love with "the right man" or the prison amazons who prey on new inmates. Real-life lesbians rarely fit into the stereotypes portrayed by mass media. They neither deny their womanhood nor their emotional attraction towards other women.
Lesbians sometimes assume a masculine personality "because it’s the only way they can get a woman." Or perhaps because if you’re a lesbian it’s more "normal" to play the dyke than look and act "like a woman"
In our culture-bound, conformity-conscious society, the easiest thing for a lesbian to do is "reform" and become a "real woman".
The Church says that when you’re gay you go straight to hell, like suicide victims, by default. But is it, really? Isn’t lying to one’s self worse than lying to others?
What happens to women whose only "sin" is to love another? Because most churches refuse to marry lesbians, is it their fault that the only sex they can have is out of wedlock?
For the Filipina lesbian, keeping a relationship entails keeping it as far back into the closet as possible. Coping means masquerading as straight or giving it all up for love.
"We are sometimes accused by ‘straight’ feminists of guilt-tripping them about their personal lives; of implying that sexual dependence on men made them somehow less feminists. In fact, we were less concerned about an individual woman’s personal choice than about the institution of heterosexuality; less concerned with sex roles than with sex-power." [Charlotte Buncai, Ms. Magazine. November 1976]
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