Lesbian (In)Visibility

My aim in writing this is to describe the legacy of concealment that those identifying as lesbian have inherited. And in doing so, to look at what is distinctive about the lesbian experience of homophobia?

Being a lesbian is not a monolithic identity. Context is all important and a foundational idea for both group analysis and intersectionality [Nayak, 2021]. The degree of abuse and injustice and marginalisation experienced by an individual lesbian depends so much on how all their identities intersect. What follows is limited by being based on a white and privileged Western history.

Why is being Visible important

Down the centuries, lesbians have found themselves ‘under the radar’.

In the UK, female homosexuality, unlike its male equivalent, has never been illegal.

Our sexuality has never been criminalised: there is no age of consent. This is an important difference from homosexual men: lesbians have not been put in prison for being lesbians, though they have been locked away in asylums or other institutions.

Some rich, upper-class lesbians like Vita Sackville-West could use their aristocratic privilege to face down speculation or criticism:

Similarly some Hollywood stars like Greta Garbo could use their celebrity status to avoid disapproval:

But away from these exceptions, the history of lesbianism is primarily one of CONCEALMENT. Women may share a domestic space without provoking social speculation or antagonism in a way that men cannot. They have the option of ‘passing as’ (ie looking like) friends or ‘companions’, a very British euphemism.

Anna Freud who declared “I am not suitable for marriage” (Young-Bruehl. 1988:121) lived for fifty years with her companion, Dorothy Burlingham. When Dorothy died, Anna took to wearing Dorothy’s sweaters “stroking these representations of the friend who no one in their acquaintance had ever seen her caress or embrace” (ibid: p443). It is hard not to read this as an emotional, if not physical, lesbian relationship.

For many lesbians, down the ages, staying invisible made them feel safer, less vulnerable.

However the price of invisibility is the absence of POWER and lack of social validation:

• If you don’t register on society’s mind, who cares if you suffer abuse or injustice?
• Who cares if your vulnerabilities overwhelm you but there is no medical, psychological or social understanding of the support and care that you need?
• Who cares if you want to formalise and have public recognition for your love and commitment to your partner but it is rejected as anti-religious, anti-social or downright disgusting?

These are not theoretical points. The evidence of trauma to mind body and soul is there:

• There is social violence – for example in London in 2019 a lesbian couple were attacked by young men on a bus for refusing to put on a titillating performance for them
• the shame associated with homophobia leads to higher rates of self-destructive behaviours like drug and alcohol abuse. Adults who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual are almost twice as likely to report symptoms of depression, anxiety and suicidality than adults identifying as heterosexual (Semlyen, King, Varney & Hagger-Johnson, 2016)

Homosexuality profoundly disrupts the borders set up by society between men and women. Lesbians are women who can dispense with men and still find sexual satisfaction. For this insult to the patriarchal order, lesbians have historically been portrayed as not only sick but also murderous – see for example the movie trope of lesbian as vampire (Gloria Holden in Dracula’s Daughter 1936):

Or they are ‘too much’’: over-sexed, insatiable, decadent. So they become fetishized by the heterosexual male gaze as objects of sexual fantasy.

Or they are too ‘mannish’ like Gertrude Stein– defying the masculine definition of femininity:

Not only do they insult male sexual pride, they defy the patriarchal order by putting themselves outside the border created by religion and society that children should only be born in a heterosexual union.

If they don’t have children – characterised as ‘sterile’- there will be catastrophic de-population. If they do have children outside marriage to a man, the fear is that the children will be ‘abnormal’ emotionally. Either way, the woman is sinful/transgressive/abnormal.

So part of the lesbian experience of homophobia is shaped by the intersection with another discrimination/oppression namely being a woman and therefore also subject to misogyny. When a lesbian gets angry about being erased, she is also risking the exposure to the misogynistic attack on women being angry. And that contributes to invisibility.

Conclusion

My aim in this short and limited piece has been to highlight how lesbians historically have sought concealment, in order to avoid homophobic attack. I believe this is changing considerably in the UK and USA: not only are many lesbian individuals out and proud but lesbian families have also reached mainstream culture (eg.  films like The Kids are All Right 2010).

Nevertheless, as group analysts, we need to recognise that our group members will be subject to persistent societal pressure to conform to the heteronormative majority and that this will vary according to the intersectional context.

In group analysis, sexuality -a key element of how the individual self is formed – has been the least theorised area, due to Foulkes’ silence on the subject. There is a danger that this foundational vacuum has allowed an unconscious bias towards heteronormativity and binary assumptions to remain embedded and unchallenged in our Foundation Matrix.

Counteracting this unconscious bias is a challenge and will take a greater openness of mind from us all, whether as trainers, supervisors, group conductors or trainees.

References

Nayak, S. (2021) Black feminist intersectionality is vital to group analysis: Can group analysis allow outsider ideas in? Group Analysis Vol.54(3)

Young-Bruehl, E (1988: 2^nd edition 2008) Anna Freud Sheridan Books: Ann Arbor, Michigan)

Sarah Tyerman  (she/her) is a queer group analyst and psychotherapist in private practice in London. She has a special interest in gender and sexuality, both of which she suggests have been comparatively under-theorised in group analysis. She has presented on gender and sexuality on a number of courses and workshops for the Institute of Group Analysis, the Group Analytic Society International and the American Group Psychotherapy Association.