Can ‘lesbian’ be your gender?

If you are a lesbian, you will know that it is far more than just a sexual orientation.

The lesbian identity has a long history, a unique culture, an extensive glossary of terms and a thriving community rooted in opposition to patriarchy and heteronormativity.

Being a lesbian is certainly about loving women, but it is also a whole lot more. As the lesbian dictionary – or any night out in a lesbian bar – reveals, there is no one single way to be a lesbian.

Lesbians can be bull dykes, masc, butch, femme and gender-non-conforming, with some preferring not to confine themselves to just one part of the spectrum that is identity and presentation. They can also be cis, trans and non-binary, ace or allo, and use various pronouns and terms to describe themselves when in a relationship.

During the press tour for Nosferatu last year, actor Lily-Rose Depp set the sapphic internet on fire when she referred to rapper 070 Shake, real name Danielle Balbuena, as her boyfriend.

“I have a locket [containing] my boyfriend’s hair, kind of like in the movie,” Depp told MTV. “I like lockets, they’re very romantic.”

Lily-Rose Depp (L) described 070 Shake as her boyfriend. (Allen Berezovsky/Getty Images)

A lot of people, particularly straight people, were confused. Balbuena uses she/her pronouns and has said her sexuality is “being into girls”, so why would Depp say she is her boyfriend?

Well, lesbian boyfriends have long been a thing in sapphic circles and can speak to decades-old masc-femme dynamics as well as the way in which lesbians play with the notion of heterosexual, cisnormative gender roles.

As Them pointed out: “The naming of a ‘lesbian boyfriend’ is often not as much a rigid label, like how we view pronouns and gender identity today, but more a playful or perfunctory acknowledgment of someone who contains multiple gender expressions their partner wants to honour, and though ‘lesbian’ and ‘boyfriend’ seem to be in opposition to each other, the term conjoins them with ease and validation.”

The LGBTQ+ publication added that “from butch husbands to dyke boyfriends, to drag kings, to he/him lesbians, the gender spectrum of lesbian identity is too expansive to limit”.

So, can lesbian be a gender?

For some people, womanhood can feel so deeply tied to restrictive gender roles, outdated notions of what a woman can be, heterosexuality and – by proxy – cisgender, straight men, that they reject it altogether and explore lesbian as a gender in and of itself.

How do people describe lesbian as a gender?

Like most identities, lesbian as a gender is unique to each person. However, there are some similarities; the key feature being rejecting womanhood because of its intertwined connection to men.

Or as writer Lisa Fouweather puts it: “Constantly defined by their relationship to men, to everything they are not – a woman is someone who isn’t a man – to be a woman who loves women is to resist the patriarchy. It’s to be defined by our relationship with other women, instead.

“This is what my womanhood is intrinsically tied to… my love for other women.”

Fouweather goes on to say that as a queer person she does not “need to conform to society’s expectations of what it means to be a woman” because she is not “preoccupied with ensuring that I am attractive enough for men.”

Similarly, editor Alexandria Juarez writes that womanhood is “often defined through the desire and approval of men” and when men are removed from the equation “womanhood didn’t feel relatable to me”.

Juarez goes on to say: “The Bechdel test [a measure of female representation in film and other media] was designed not to prove how feminist something is, but to show how little media shows women separated from their relationships to men.

“When I built my world, embracing my queerness and love for womanhood, I was able to see my disconnect from it. I wasn’t a woman but a lesbian, an identity so powerful it’s the closest thing to a gender I have.”

Across various forums and threads, lots of different people have also spoken of their experiences.

One Reddit user cited how their partner described the idea of lesbian as a gender. “So much of our experience as women is shaped by our relationships to men: having sex with men, getting pregnant by men.

“To live a life where men are so decentred feels like something different. My existence as a lesbian makes my experience of womanhood feel like a different thing. Womanhood encompasses so much, a lot of my gender experience is shaped by my sexuality and the social context I exist in by virtue of being a lesbian.”

Many lesbians feel their gender is about their disconnect from traditional womanhood. (Canva)

A different user noted: “As someone who identifies as queer as a gender, people who identify as lesbian as a gender often feel their gendered-experience as a woman is very different from the experience of a heterosexual women.”

A third said that heterosexuality was “baked into performing your gender correctly” and so if “part of successfully performing womanhood (according to normative standards) involves heterosexuality or even just generally giving a sh*t about men, then lesbians fall outside of what it means to be ‘the standard woman’.

“For some people, that’s enough to consider their lesbianism as its own gender.”

Others disagreed with the idea of lesbian being considered a gender, with one feeling womanhood should not be in any way be defined by interactions with men. “Lesbians and straight women are both women with individual experiences,” they said.

A different user believed that identifying with womanhood as someone who was butch was empowering. “I see woman as not enough to describe my gender,” they said.