What do you do to promote visibility/awareness?

[Esme nha Maire]

Interesting post, Kobi. I know what you mean about just being oneself, and I feel very much like you on that subject. Ditto being kind to others, ditto misogyny and sexism. I am curious about your comment regarding lesbian spaces, and in particular, the bit about people 'need lesbian to be something other than what it is' - could you elucidate, please? I thought the term lesbian was straightforward and generally understood - a woman that finds other women sexually attractive - and, perhaps it's due to a difference in culture between the USA and the UK, but I've never heard of anyone thinking it to mean anything else!

Originally Posted by Kobi

What do you do to promote visibility/awareness?

I've been out for over 40 years and never had the need to promote the visibility of or awareness of lesbians or myself as a lesbian.

I have never hidden who I was and never understood people who felt they needed to live dual lives. I found a peace, pride, and acceptance in just living my life without apologies or excuses.

I hope I have been and will continue to be a role model to other women to do female and woman as it fits them rather than adhere to arbitrary stereotypes expected from outsiders or insiders. THAT is more important to me.

What others might see as acts of kindness, I see as being human. I dont shovel out my elderly neighbors car because I am a lesbian. I dont bring them their newspaper or mail in bad whether because of my lesbianism either.

In my experience, people dont give a rats ass who I choose to sleep with. Such thoughts dont even enter peoples minds as much as we think they do LOL. They do care about who I am as a human being.

I find I encounter more and more issues of "visibility/awareness" and respect within the queer community than I do outside of it.

I find the sexism and misogyny to be quite obvious and offensive.

I find there are more stereotypical assumptions and presumptions made about who I SHOULD be as both a woman and a lesbian rather than accepting an actual display of diversity, something which we are fond of promoting but have noticeable troubling doing.

I have had to address respecting lesbian spaces in a mixed community in many different venues. I wondered if this thread was placed in the lesbian zone for the sake of lesbians or to encroach on lesbian space? Dunno. Only the OP can answer that.

I have often, of late, had to address what a lesbian is to people within the queer spectrum who need lesbian to be something other than what it is. And, I have to address the same issue with outsiders who mistake atypical femaleness for transgenderism.

Frankly, it is all getting rather tiresome.

[Clyde]

I think I promote visibility just by walking out my door I don't think anyone reads me as anything other than a big honkin' butch.

[Ascot]

Originally Posted by Clyde

I think I promote visibility just by walking out my door I don't think anyone reads me as anything other than a big honkin' butch.

This made me laugh aloud. I'm sure the same goes for me, and I think it's a good thing. We're just people making our way in the world, no harm, no foul.