WOMYN Wednesday!

[WOMYN magazine is excited to announce that we are 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.]

This week we would like to annouce that we have WOMYN bookmarks! Let's make WOMYN one of the first things the incoming students see! Click here to download them directly, (or click here to access them on the WOMYN website). If you're a RA, work at a location on campus, or you're just plan awesome, print out some WOMYN bookmarks (be sure to print them double sided with SHORT edge binding in Microsoft Word), and leave them in locations around campus or hand them out to help let others know that LGBTQ individuals are welcome here.

(Need a little motivation? Do it for the Class of 2014! Think about how different your first year would have been if one of the first things you saw during orientation was a bookmark for a LGBTQ women's magazine. It would have been amazing.)

This week's WOMYN poll is:

"Who is your favorite character on the L-Word?"

Click here to vote!

(You can view the results of the poll in WOMYN magazine when it hits campus late fall semester!)

(Note: This piece contains a small *spoiler* of the 6th season of the show.)

"Everybody's straight until they're not." - The L-Word

The L-Word was originally produced by Ilene Chaiken, an openly lesbian screenwriter, and the show ran on Showtime for 6 seasons from 2004-2009. (Fun fact: Ilene Chaiken also coordinated The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air before her work with the L-Word.) The television series takes place in Los Angeles (although it was filmed in Vancouver, Canada) and focuses on the lives of a rotating group of lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters who live in West Hollywood.

Whether you love it or you hate it, the L-word was one of the first primetime television shows that focused almost solely on queer women. In this way, the L-word was a major success, but in many other aspects it failed to live up to some of the expectations viewers had about the program. The show lacked an accurate portrayal of diversity in almost every way possible. Ethnic/racial diversity, socioeconomic status (they live in West Hollywood), gender expression and bisexual and transgender characters all seemed to be missing in the primarily white, lesbian and affluent cast of the show. In addition, some viewers thought that the show's final season, which ends with the murder of one of the main characters, fufills the stereotypical older LGBT literature plotline of the tragic lesbian ending.

But despite its flaws, it was arguably one of the most successful and popular LGBTQ-women's series to date. Due to its wide popularity, this week we wanted to focus on the show that placed queer women in a much more visible section of the media. Who's your favorite character? And what did you love/hate about the show? Let us know in the comments field your opinions and ideas about the L-Word. (If you're comfortable with your quote appearing in the magazine, feel free to add your name and your Duke affiliation.)

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Want to submit to WOMYN magazine? Don't wait until all of the schoolwork hits this semester-get your submission in now! (Remember how difficult Physics 53 and History 190C were during the school year?) The submission deadline is September 15th.

Check out our website for more information, and feel free to email us with any questions you might have: womynatduke@gmail.com. All are highly encouraged to submit - LGBTQ and straight-allied. Anyone with a Duke affiliation is eligible to write for WOMYN, including alumni, staff, faculty, undergraduate and graduate students alike.

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 ]