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God, I haven’t thought about lesbian stereotypes since 1997, when we were all sitting around dirty little tables under fluorescent lights in smarmy classrooms discussing whether or not Ellen was butch reading Leslie Feinberg lighting cigarettes for femmes. Why would I? The only experience I had with stereotyping directly was a)going to Sarah Lawrence, abandon all hope ye who enter there b)the year I cut my hair short. Since I have a contralto voice and a strong jaw, I sometimes got the odd look or the “Sir” from conductors on trains. No hate crimes. My mother was irritated that I cut all my pretty hair, and she was right. My hair is pretty, so I grew it out. But I didn’t stop lifting weights and playing sports and holding the door for women. So who knows?

Frankly, I can’t make myself care. I live in a post-gay bubble, where neither I nor my girlfriend nor my straight friends pay any attention to the current standards of gaydom, should there be any. Perhaps that’s a narcissistic problem. Perhaps I’m out of touch. I had a four-foot transgen standing on a chair once screaming at me for not caring about the struggle, since I could pass so easily. I am aware that being gay isn’t easy anywhere, and that my environs allow me to ignore what I couldn’t were I in, say, rural Ohio. But even when I lived in rural Ohio I went to the dyke bars with my flaming gay male friends and had an amazing time. So does my opinion count?

Stereotyping is harmful if it pigeonholes a person into a lifestyle or role they don’t want, but don’t feel they have an alternative. Worse, when a stereotype gives ammunition to hate, by reinforcing unjustifiable fears. For lesbians, we deal with the fear of our corrupting influence on heterosexual mores, and the irrational jealous anger we can provoke in male strangers when they can target, by a haircut or a style of dress, less than feminine behavior or intentions. If we’re femme, then we have men single us out for their sexual attentions, and irrational anger when they’re rebuffed. But this analysis is both banal and stereotypical as well.

Stereotyping is helpful if it allows a lesbian to grow into a role or self she might never have known about otherwise. If “butch” and all it implies is a freeing agent for anyone, then thank god that identity exists to be claimed. Also for “femme.” These words carry immense meaning but they can be an example of language giving power and voice to the unspoken.

The word stereotype is from the late 18th century, a printing term for an unedited template. For the next hundred years, it would mean “a kind that does not change,” before acquiring it’s current pejorative meaning in the early 20th century. Like all classifications, a stereotype can be understood as a model for understanding, however wrong, applied early to a group or thing seen as unified and immutable. But we know better, girls. People change from moment to moment, and lesbian history more than proves that change is part and parcel of who we are. We are a kind changing, and so is the world. I live for the day we can put to rest all stereotypes.

by Kate