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Great vocabulary question from Bond of Dear Diaspora:

That conflation of dozens of identities with each other under the “lesbian” heading is really a strange thing. Why, why do we have one measly word that’s supposed to be able to stretch to describe the experiences of, say, butch dykes who like femmes, femmes who like queer masculinity in the form of butches, bois, queer guys, etc., androdykes who only like other androdykes, and separatists for whom lesbianism is largely political ideology?

Read the quote in context here.

It all makes sense, of course, if you just mean “someone identified by straight people as female and not straight.” Which makes approximately as much sense as people of one nationality calling everyone else on the planet “foreigners.” The latter distinction only really makes sense to the people making the distinction.

As opposed to, say, their potential victims. But when you consider the distinction comes from people who want to operate on others (“should she be ‘cured’ of not having sex with men?” or “should we round them up and intern them?”) those kinds of definitions might be technically accurate and even pragmatic for those making the policies.

But not otherwise particularly useful for the identified. For instance the only thing a Hungarian and, say, an American Samoan in, say, Nebraska might have in common besides their location is their “foreigner-ness.” Or, as Bond points out, the only thing a femme and a separatist might have in common besides their identification-by-others is their not-sexual-interest in men.