The sorry tale of an excommunicated lesbian
by Sharlot
[Note: This article supplied by Pleasure Activism Australia. PAA, in recognising the diversity of sexual pleasure, encourages people to support all sexual preferences involving consenting adults. Consequently, PAA works towards building bridges between sexual communities, in order to overcome the sort of behaviour described in the following essay.]
The tale I am about to tell is one of sorrow both personal and political. I am an "excommunicated lesbian". This I know because, whilst I have been living as a bisexual woman openly for 10 months now, I previously lived as a lesbian within the cloisters of the so-called "lesbian community".
During the past 6 months, I have attempted to maintain connections with people I mixed with whilst I was in a lesbian relationship. I have tried keeping in touch, my latest attempt being sending Christmas cards and making follow up phone calls to some of the women on that list.
Tonight I spoke with another woman on that list, one whom I have always respected as a genuine person, and with whom I felt I enjoyed a 'special' friendship (we share the same birthday, and for the last 6 years have usually celebrated it together).
During our conversation she asked me how I was doing. Being the person I knew her to be I told her exactly how I was feeling. I told her that I was experiencing feelings of both rejection and indeed excommunication. I could sense her discomfort as I spoke but felt I needed to continue to be heard by at least one member of the 'sisterhood' who I felt I could trust, even if for no other reason than she herself has had relationships with men, and had said she herself had experienced first hand the same treatment from the heterosexual community.
As the conversation continued it became clear that (with questions about 'our' birthday celebration), the tradition that I - and, I had thought, she - had enjoyed in the past would not be occurring this year. She said that she was planning a "small intimate dinner as she didn't feel like too big a bash this year". This 'friend' of mine suggested that we meet around our birthday for dinner by ourselves.
The penny was beginning to drop: this woman who I had respected and believed to be genuine and fair was herself excluding me from a dinner with 'intimates' that we had both in previous years shared.
This information was busy being collated in my head with other 'evidence' of excommunication: for example, the fact that, despite my attempts to the contrary, I had not heard from any of my so-called 'friends', unless I did the contacting.
One particular friend with whom I spent 6 months of my life giving almost daily counselling when she was coming out as a lesbian, and who comes from a Southern European heritage, and who herself experienced threats of and actual violence and excommunication from her family, told me recently that she wasn't sure how to feel about my life choices, and that she wondered how much we still had in common, and indeed was not sure if she still could be my friend.
There have been no calls wondering how I was coping following the separation from my lesbian lover, now 6 months old. However, whenever I spoke to mutual so-called 'friends' I was eagerly told how often they saw my ex-partner.
I am left wondering, wondering if these attitudes are due to the fact that I have not made it publicly known that the reason I left my 6 year relationship with a woman was due to the years of domestic violence that both my children and I endured, not to the half-baked assumption that I wanted to pursue a relationship with a man. Indeed my ex-partner and I had negotiated and were living within an open relationship well before I had a relationship with a man.
These are unfortunately themes that the lesbian community refuses to deal with, despite domestic violence being paid lip service. I remember hearing about this kind of attitude when I was a 'card carrying' lesbian, but didn't actually believe it happened. Sadly, I am here to say that indeed it does, and it is wrong, wrong, wrong! Although this is a tale from the lesbian community, as it is from my own personal experience, I have sadly heard of similar behaviour in the gay community - both domestic violence and 'excommunication' - from gay friends.
On the political front, it is a sad day when one realises that one is befriended within the so-called GBLTI community purely on the basis of one's sexual orientation, and not upon the people we are. One expects, and many experience, this within the straight community, but not within a community that purports to 'embrace diversity' as was the theme of the 2004 Pride March in Victoria.
I am left bewildered and angry that as a marginalised group within society that is intimately familiar with what it means to be discriminated against in everyday life, we continue to discriminate and oppress others within, in particular members of the transgender, intersex and bisexual elements of the rainbow, our queer community symbol of unity.
Mainly, however, i am deeply saddened.
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Copyright (c) 2004 Sharlot
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