Queer Corner - Internal Hierarchy of the LGBTQ+ community: How does it affect queer women?

In mainstream society, there is a belief that because all LGBTQIA+ people have similar experiences of discrimination, that does not mean that they will share the same mindset, especially considering the community is full of people of different genders, backgrounds, age, religion, and place of birth. This may lead to some hostilities towards some people within the communities due to personal bigotries still being at play.

I interviewed several queer women about their experiences in the community and asked about this phenomenon. There was a general consensus found throughout these interviews that there are many inner workings of the community that can negatively affect specific people within the community.

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A notable experience that many of the women identified was the differential treatment of bisexuals, specifically bisexual women. One interviewee described how “bisexuals are probably the most invalidated in the community, I’m someone who currently identifies as pansexual, and I’ve had my sexuality invalidated by people who told me that my sexuality is transphobic because it apparently infers that bisexual people are stuck up for only being into two genders. It’s weird.”

Another interviewee described the misconceptions around bisexuality. “There are still a lot of preconceptions that bisexuals are either greedy, promiscuous, or cannot "make up their mind".

These misconceptions rely on the idea that women who identify as bisexual “inevitably” end up with men. One of the queer women interviewees stated that “I would try to explain [to my lesbian friends] why this seems like the case and how bisexual women hold a lot of compulsory heterosexual internalisations, but inevitably I would get nowhere with it.

[…] They can only wrap their heads around being gay or straight. Someone who exists somewhere in the middle is just incomprehensible, and if they end up with someone of the opposite gender, they become a pariah in the community”. It is clear there is still a lot of distrust and misunderstanding when it comes to bisexuality, and within the LGBTQ+ community, women are still disproportionately criticised for their sexuality.

The interviewees also brought the idea of a “gold-star lesbian” to the narrative. This is a lesbian who has only been with other women, and has never had a sexual experience with a man. If a woman who identifies as lesbian has been with a man before, or has never been with a woman, they can be referred to as a “baby gay”. This language creates a hierarchy within the community of people who are deemed “worthy” of the label they identify with, and those who are not, due to lack of 'experience'.

This notion is flawed as even if a straight person was still a virgin or had no encounters with the opposite sex, their sexuality would not be brought into question. One interviewee describes this experience: “It’s like trying to say that you’re a lesbian and you’re proud, but that also unintentionally negatively impacts lesbians who happened to date men in the past.”

Although the interviews carried out were only with women, several noted how they have gay male friends who also experience discrimination within the community. One interviewee noted how they have seen friends be rejected because they are effeminate. She notes how it is “so obviously just internalised misogyny”. Gay men disproportionately are glamourised by the typical straight cis woman, who see a gay man as “an accessory” or “gay best friend”. This type of faux allyship was explained by one of the queer women, “gay men, for the most part, are not considered men, not men that we are afraid of, so they are one of the girls”. This soothes the egos of the straight cis women by not making the gay men in their group an equal.

This collection of interviews uncovers a lot of the universal experiences that most queer people are familiar with. In recent years, we have seen shows such as Pose highlight these struggles faced by the community right now. There was a general consensus that in order to reverse some of these nuances within the community, everyone must actively listen to each other and understand the experiences they share with their community. This way, there will be more understanding and less misconceptions will be circulated. Therefore, with a collective effort, we can understand, connect, and respect each other.