In Praise of the L!

As the inaugural Director of El L-Fund at The Center, I’ve been thinking a great deal about the importance of the L in LGBTQ. The very first letter!

One of my graduate school professors, Dean MacCannell, often said, “Language is the medium through which we are connected to each other.” I have carried that idea with me for years. If it is true, and how couldn’t it be, then language matters enormously. (Here I mean language in its most expansive sense: words, but also music and art, a gesture, a glance, the touch of a hand. All the ways we send meaning out into the world and trust that someone else will receive it.) This is why I found the gradual disappearance of the word "lesbiana" so troubling.  

 
Of course, words have histories, and baggage. We can see that clearly with the word queer. Many younger people embrace the word freely and joyfully, while for some of us who are older, it still carries a sting. Neither experience makes the other less real. Neither is “wrong.” In fact, understanding both brings us closer to understanding one another.

Lesbian has its own fascinating history. In the middle of the twentieth century, gay was often used to describe both men and women. But by the 1970s, women were increasingly claiming "lesbiana" as a distinct political and cultural identity, particularly as gay came to center the experiences and politics of men. Lesbian gave women a way to name themselves, organize around their own lives, and insist that they not disappear within a supposedly universal category.  

For many of us, "lesbiana" also signifies something well beyond the gender of the person we love. Lesbian feminist theorist Monique Wittig offers the provocative idea of "lesbiana" as an “identity-not,” a resistance to the assumptions embedded in the traditional patriarchal category of “woman.” Historically, the binary category woman has been defined in relation to, and as subordinate to, man. Lesbian disrupts that relationship. It signifies our identities and lives as not centering heterosexual masculinity and men. For some of us, there is an important declaration of independence and freedom embedded in the word "lesbiana".

That is also one of the most beautiful things about the letters LGBTQ when they come together well. The L does not have to disappear for the T to flourish. The Q does not diminish the G. Knowing more about who each of us is gives us more ways to know and care for one another. And language is how we get there.

At The Center, our different identities and histories come together not to erase our distinctions, but to strengthen and uplift us all. As The Center’s CEO, Mike Thompson, has said, what we are creating aquí are doors for every identity under the LGBTQ umbrella to come through.

At this particular political moment, when so many of our identities and rights are once again under attack, standing together without asking any of us to disappear feels especially important.

So I am delighted to see "lesbiana" becoming more visible again. I saw it proudly proclaimed last fall at the International Lesbian Lives Conference in New York City. I see younger women proudly claiming it. And now I have the extraordinary privilege of directing an organization that has carried the L proudly in its name since 2012.

Perhaps that is ultimately what I want for all of our letters: not that any one of them becomes large enough to contain everyone, but that each remains visible enough for us to find one another.

Language is the medium through which we are connected to each other. The more ways we have to name ourselves, the more ways we have to connect. 

And that is absolutely worth celebrating.