I was born in 1987. I don't know a time when queer* women weren't part of our cultural and social landscape. While I was going through puberty, Ellen DeGeneres blissfully caressed Anne Heche's on red carpets and TATU played lesbians on MTV. During high school I relished episodes of The L Word whenever my fundamentalist mother wasn't home. I danced in dim-lit bedrooms to Scissor Sisters and Ani DiFranco with friends, hiding empty bottles in our purses. I watched But I'm a Cheerleader at least fifty times. Queer women my age don't face the cultural wasteland that women like Rachel Maddow faced. There are women like us on TV every day. But is this peri-mainstream visibility enough?
The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel had a profound effect on me this past spring. I had (finally) officially come out of the closet and I was buzzing with an odd blend of fear and ecstacy when I found Bechdel. Her collection, published by Houghton Mifflin in 2008, is an iconic representation of the evolution of queer visibility in pop culture.
Bechdel's comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For (DTWF) began in 1983 and chronicles the lives, relationships, and politics of a diverse group of characters, most of them lesbians. DTWF was one of the earliest representations of lesbians in pop culture and has made an indelible mark on queer culture and is partially responsible for the evolution of queer women's cultural visibility.
People my age are part of the most GLBTQ-aware generation yet, but queer women seem to have become visible only as subjects of our social dialogue about sexuality, not active participants.
In an interview about The Essential DTWF, Bechdel muses about this.
But at the same time, queer culture is more mainstream now than ever. The strip ends in a very different world than it began.It's been a very surreal quarter-century in that sense. I could never have imagined that things would evolve in this particular way. When I came out, it was into this very radical leftish gay politics that was all about... well, people joke about the homosexual agenda but really we did want to destroy marriage. [laughs] To create alternative structures. And that really didn't happen.
Bechdel goes on to specify that there's a social trend toward "sameness and uniformity," citing the closing of independent bookstores and local businesses, so it's not unique to the queer movement and queer culture. The rampant commercialization of political/social movements is is troubling, to say the least. It takes the radical strength from a movement and distracts from said movement's true goals.
At the end of The Essential DTWF Cartoonist Introduction , Bechdel asks her readers a fundamental question.
She asks us to decide: are the now-iconic queer women in DTWF essentially the same, or essentially different? The mainstream presence of queer women, or at least representations of them, has positively and negatively affected our societal beliefs about women who fall outside of conventional gender roles, particularly those who are lesbian, queer, and/or bisexual. Young women like me do have someone like us to look for when we're afraid of being who we are. We are present; we are both truthfully and hatefully represented. We are essentially the same, because we're seen, and we are essentially different, because we're often seen as subjects in someone else's story, talking points in someone else's sexual or moral discourse. When we tell our own stories, which Bechdel is an expert at, they cease being our own when they become part of a mainstream, national discourse.
Women who happen to or choose to live outside of conventional gender roles are still viewed as "fiery," "man-hating," "sluts," who deserve to punished (trigger warning for that link). Being a feminist, being ambitious, being gay or bi or queer, continue to be radical identities and characteristics, even after 25 years of DTWF, millions of Ani DiFranco albums sold, six seasons of The L Word, and a '90s Drew Barrymore saying yes, she likes girls.
Visibility matters, but it is only the first step. New media like online journalism and blogging has helped further evolve queer women's "surreal," ongoing journey from the margins of our cultural landscape. Blogs and social networking sites like AfterEllen.com flourish along with Twitter and the blogosphere provides a fresh, interactive platform where anyone with access to the Internet, a love for writing, learning, and debating, can join queer women's move toward a new possibility. Instead of claiming characters as role models in fiction, we can be our own.
*I use the term "queer" interchangably with LGBTQ/GLBTQ, and I also self-identify as queer, so this is why I use the term so repetitively.
Note: This is an article I'm working on as part of a small series I intend to write about queer women in pop culture. I will be writing a review of Ann Bannon's Odd Girl Out as the final article in the series. I'm still ruminating on the second one. I want to improve this one first. Please let me know any constructive criticism any of you have as well as general reactions. Thanks!
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Hey, great post! DTWOF has definitely shaped my queer identity, to the point that I actually call myself a dyke sometimes, which I never would have done before reading the series.
I question the extent to which Bechdel is part of the "mainstream." Her exquisite graphic memoir, Fun Home, is available at big box bookstores (Buns'N'Noodles), but instead of being grouped with the other graphic novels, it tends to be ghettoized in the "Gay and Lesbian" section.
I wish that Bechdel's work was embraced more widely in the mainstream. Then when I told people about my girlfriend they might not think I was talking about my "friend who is a girl." Despite huge advances in the past 25 years, I still often feel invisible as a baby dyke to watch out for.
Exactly! I gave my (straight) sister a copy of Fun Home for Christmas last year, and she loved it. Allison Bechdel has a lot to say, and not just to fellow dykes. The problem is that few non-dykes know who she is. Like you said, femme, queer women have important things to add to broader discussions of feminism, sexuality, and gender, but we only seem to be invited to the party in order to make somebody else's point.
Like you said, femme, queer women have important things to add to broader discussions of feminism, sexuality, and gender, but we only seem to be invited to the party in order to make somebody else's point.
Thanks for reading eastsidekate! This is exactly what I was trying to say. We are visible mostly as subjects in someone else's discourse on feminism, sexuality, and gender, or we're subjects in someone else's fantasy (i.e. fodder for the male gaze).
Like you said, femme, queer women have important things to add to broader discussions of feminism, sexuality, and gender, but we only seem to be invited to the party in order to make somebody else's point.
Thanks for reading eastsidekate! This is exactly what I was trying to say. We are visible mostly as subjects in someone else's discourse on feminism, sexuality, and gender, or we're subjects in someone else's fantasy (i.e. fodder for the male gaze).
Thanks Rachel!
I question the extent to which Bechdel is part of the "mainstream." ... but instead of being grouped with the other graphic novels, it tends to be ghettoized in the "Gay and Lesbian" section.
I agree with you, I think I should've made that more clear. I didn't mean to imply that Bechdel's work is part of the mainstream, but queer female characters are part of the mainstream. Everyone can name at least one gay/bi/queer female character on a recent TV show or in a recent movie. Not to mention Ellen DeGeneres and Rachel Maddow are daily visible members of the media. I agree that Bechdel's graphic novels are often ghettoized, like almost every true work of queer art.
I still often feel invisible as a baby dyke to watch out for.
Aww, me too in a way. Being ghettoized and objectified is a form is invisibility.
This is my first time posting a comment, and I really appreciate your responding! I think your post was fantastic and I look forward to reading the rest of your series.
I still question that everyone can name a queer female character from popular culture. I get a lot of blank stares when I mention The L Word outside of my circle of friends...
We also shouldn't leave out of the discussion how much privilege comes with certain kinds of "invisibility." As a (white) femme, I can easily take advantage of a lot of straight, cis-gender privilege.
For your post on Anne Bannon, you might want to look into a play based on her work called "The Beebo Brinker Chronicles" that was in NY about a year ago. It was written/produced/directed by some amazing dykes theater peeps.
You're welcome Rachel, thanks for commenting!
Point taken about whether everyone can name a queer female from pop culture, that's true. I can safely say that I think the vast majority of people under the age of 30 can name at least one.
We also shouldn't leave out of the discussion how much privilege comes with certain kinds of "invisibility." As a (white) femme, I can easily take advantage of a lot of straight, cis-gender privilege.
That's a really good point. I can also take advantage of a lot of straight, cis-gender privilege. I'm a cis-female queer femme too ('cept I'm black). It depends on who I'm walking with that seems to matter.
I wanted to go into this issue, but I felt like it would cause me to derail and I would end up talking about the evolution of queer women's presence in pop culture, and about the privilege that comes with invisibility which are two similar but different topics. I'd like to work that in somehow, I just don't know how I can do it without derailing.
Thanks for the tip about The Beebo Brinker Chronicles!
Wow, I'm new to this site and new to the queer community, this being said I don't know much about DTWOF but I'm definitely going to look into it.
Yet, being newly out, I'm scrounging around online, jumping into the open arms of sites such as AfterEllen and LGBT collaborations on Youtube and Twitter, and I definitely think queer visibility is on the rise in cyberspace, but in reality I have to find a queer niche ...
I'm going to end with that for now, but I do look forward to upcoming articles :)
Thanks for commenting Christiane. Glad to meet another newly out lady!
I'm scrounging around online, jumping into the open arms of sites such as AfterEllen...but in reality I have to find a queer niche.
Totally. Me too. Even though I live in a very "gay" city (one of top five most GLBT residents per capita in the US, actually), I'm still shy and anxious (even though I had a girlfriend when I was 16 and called it "experimentation" and ran away from her when my peers started called me a dyke). I feel like I'm going through a crazy second puberty.
Well sorry for getting so mushy everybody, haha. I hope you find your queer niche Christiane. :)
thanks
I adore Alison Bechdel. I just finished the Essential DTWOF, and every time I read her work her talent amazes me. And while this is another small subset of culture, she is most assuredly well-known among graphic novel fans as well as the LGBTQ community, and rightfully so.