Womyn Wednesday!

[WOMYN magazine is excited to announce that we will be featuring polls from our community in the magazine! We want to hear what you have to say about LGBTQ issues, queer women and Duke! The general goal of WOMYN magazine is to increase the visibility of queer women on this campus.]

Thank you to everyone who participated in last week's poll. The responses were great, and if you haven't voted yet you still can.

We would also like to announce that we are now accepting submissions from alumni in the magazine! After talking with some past queer female alumni from Duke, we think that including alumni voices would bring a really great perspective to the magazine, and it would also serve as a great resource for current Duke students. We're really excited about connecting with our greater LGBTQ Duke community, so be sure to let your graduated friends know they can submit!

(Thanks to Tina Siadak, Summer Puente and Chantel Liggett for collectively coming up with the ideas in this poll. Go team!)

This week's WOMYN poll is:

"Which of these images comes to mind when you hear the term 'queer woman'?"

Click here to vote in this week's WOMYN poll.

Note: the responses are images for this week-you may select more than one option. Also, please note that by including a photo here, we are in no way making a statement about the photographed individual's sexuality.

Image 1, 2 (right) and 3 (bottom)

This week we want to hear your ideas on the stereotypes of queer women and how LGBTQ-identified women are perceived. This poll is meant to spark discussion. Can anybody ever "look queer"? Can the girl making out with a boy identify as queer? Could a softball player be queer? Is the woman with short hair wearing the sweater vest queer? Maybe the woman wearing a sari is queer? Or could it be the girl in the Hollister ad with a man? What does being queer mean?

Image 4, 5 (right) and 6 (bottom)

Why is it that we might associate one image with queer, but not another? Is this a misunderstanding of what it means to be LGBTQ? Let us know what you think by voting, and feel free to respond in the comments section as well if you are comfortable being quoted in the magazine. (Please provide your name and Duke affiliation as well, ex. "Jane Doe, Trinity '11).

Image 7, 8 (right) and 9 (bottom)

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Want to see the results of this week's poll? Pick up a copy of the WOMYN magazine in late Fall when it hits the newsstands!

Have an idea for next week's poll? Let us know, or email us to guest write it!

Want to submit to WOMYN magazine? Click here to look at some ideas of what to submit. (The submission deadline is September 15th.) Check out our website for more information on how to submit, and feel free to email us with any questions you might have: womynatduke@gmail.com.

The L-Word

“I’m gay.”

That’s how I come out. Or at least, that is my current word choice for the moment. I haven’t had to use that phrase at Duke for awhile now. But now that I’m back in Tucson, Arizona, in addition to feeling the heat, wincing in pain when people talk about SB1070, and just generally enjoying home for a week, I’ve also been coming out again to a lot of my high school friends who didn’t know I was gay beforehand. Luckily though, coming out the second time is almost a walk in the park compared to the first.

But I said it again. The G-word.

I first realized it yesterday when I was discussing my sexuality with my best friend over coffee. I kept using statements like, “Well because I’m gay….”, or “Being gay has allowed me to…”. Notice a trend? It’s always the G-word. Never the L-word. Always gay, never lesbian.

So…it got me thinking. Why don’t I use the term lesbian more often in conversation? Is there some sort of positive connotation that the word “gay” has that “lesbian” just hasn’t reached yet? Does calling myself a “lesbian” seem more abrasive? More radical? More “other”?

Quick side note: (I have a point, I promise!) - If I had to pick my favorite queer television show, it would actually be the L-word. Don’t get me wrong-it isn’t topping the lists of America’s most elevated television programming. To begin, for a queer woman’s show, it portrays a strikingly high ratio of femme lesbians, with few butch or androgynous women to counterbalance that. To add to that conundrum, bisexuality is oddly absent as well, with the exception of one or two of the lead women identifying this way. But despite it’s flaws, as a queer female, I also can’t avoid the fact that it was an entire 6-season show that focused almost exclusively on queer women and their lives and relationships. So I pretty much thought it was awesome.

The thing I loved the most about the show was that the lead female characters really embraced the term lesbian. It was their power word-they owned it, dropping it as often as they could. There was no hesitation. I don’t really think they ever used the word gay when they described themselves.

I think that’s something I’d like to personally work on-to really own the word lesbian and use it more often. I just finished reading 2 books by feminist author Jessica Valenti, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from her writings, it’s that a patriarchal society tends to devalue femininity-all types of it. Lesbian, is an innately female word. Ergo, perhaps our society, in an effort to discredit women in general, takes a stab at LGBT women too.

“Gay” doesn’t define us all. “Lesbian” certainly doesn’t either. That would overlook the transgendered, bisexual, intersex, pansexual, allied and queer communities at large. I also understand some people don’t want a label. To be perfectly honest, I don’t want a label either. But there is a difference between forcing yourself to adopt the word lesbian as a label, and just plain using the word more often. I wonder if part of helping more people to identify as queer also means making these labels more accessible, more commonplace and more visible.

If we don’t use the word lesbian, who will?

[If this topic is interesting to anyone else, I'd super love to see what other people have to say. :D ]