congrats! you're a lesbian (or not)
on *the* masterdoc, internet lesbianism, and how to know you're an exclusive carpet muncher.
in the land before iPods, yanni spins on a cd reader. my mother is decades younger than she is now, her hair reflecting the phosphor in the street lamps outside. those long steel rods gaze over my windowsill, shining against my toddler bed. i am small– young enough to be full of questions, innocence, and the belief that something lives at the top of a roller coaster or inside the stomach of a pregnant woman. curiosity envelops me. i am both starving for answers to existential questions and satiated with thoughts of a girl in my art class. this night, i ask my mother about marriage and whether or not i will follow in her footsteps.
when you’re older, you’ll get married to your best friend, just like daddy and i
i shoot back a reply– one that empties out of me, nonrational and pure:
my best friend can’t be a boy
my girlfriend and i became official in december, after six blissful months of resisting a u-haul. when i first fell for her, i swallowed a stark shock— not that she was a woman, of course— but that, following an eternity of feeling out of reach, i could finally grasp the back of her neck and nibble on her ears, within reason. she was real.
being out of the closet heals the brain. my girlfriend stands stoic and gentle, often taking control of my discomfort. she sends pho to my doorstep when i am hungry, tipping the dasher well. should i complain about how i need new workout clothes, she asks me to send her a link. when my muscles ache, she sinks her strong thumbs into my traps. i sigh in the quiet mornings, when our skin is sweaty. i reach around her, resting my hands between the valley of her chest to gather dew. i kiss the corners of her crusted eyes. i sniff her baby hairs. when i am in love, all that sex, spit, and under-the-covers whispering infuses me with a tea-like generosity. where once was a cynic, now lies a pink, blooming optimism.
there are more unrecognized dykes in this world. perhaps you are one of them.
2024 = THE YEAR OF THE INTERNET LESBIAN
we are living in the queerest time in us history or, at least, the most reported.1 through this visibility, americana welcomes an influx of gay media. whether it be arcane or four different Chappel Roan songs going through straight-woman-appropriation discourse, there’s no doubt: lesbians gripped last years’s algorithm by the balls.
despite this worldwide visibility, however, america’s darlings continue to struggle with their sexualities. in an interview with the beloved good-luck babe star, Roan confesses to being "so uncomfortable” being gay. another pop-culture mogul, Julia Fox, told la times about her hesitancy to cultivate relationships with women before coming out as a lesbian this past july:
“i think i’m just so afraid to open that can of worms, because i know that once i do… there’s no coming back from it, and i know that i’ll just be a lesbian. it will happen, eventually. i’m just prolonging it, personally, because i’m afraid.”
if current lesbo-icons go through this questioning on a grand stage, i can only imagine what the common, questioning girl looks like. in fact, i don’t need to imagine– that struggling lesbian was me: serially dating men, gagging over an ‘am i bisexual or lesbian?’ reddit thread, scouring the masterdoc for five years straight, and developing a nasty neck-hump.
if you ask a dyke “how did you know you were one?” they might tell you they knew upon their exit from the womb. when i asked my girlfriend, for instance, she smiled and raised an eyebrow. with a coy shrug, she explained that she merely reaffirmed her dyke-hood as a child while watching the pussycat dolls’ buttons music video. such tales of static, unshakeable sexuality bring a sense of comforting nonchalance to the whole ordeal. others– the bad lesbians that the internet hates— tell a more complex story.
i am one of those bad lesbians. it took me 24 years– seven of which i identified as bisexual– to understand my sexuality as it stands. so, how could i have gotten it “wrong” for so long?
accepting one’s identity can feel both expansive and isolating. in resistance to both gender and sexual oppression, lesbianism exists outside of the hetero-patriarchal continuum. this freedom can also appear to be like building a chair without the instruction manual.
even in acknowledging my bisexuality, post-highschool, i placed many rules on my exploration with girls. at first, i found myself nervous to initiate physical developments beyond making out. what would happen the next morning? what if i liked it more? my ‘dating’ pool (if one could even call it that) relied on freshly out and also inexperienced women. a stint with the L word only gave me tools to cheat and i had spent so much energy performing for men on dates that i had no idea what script to play with women.
many established queers settle into the lack of “supposed to be’s” when it comes to their expression. young, confused queers run to the internet. internet lesbianism is a polarized beast with two heads, being both accessible for small-town gays and prone to bizarre, chronic behaviors. a girl is bound to get lost between those who believe bi-lesbianism exists and those who are morally opposed to using a strap-on (neither great tools for self discovery).
simply put, nuanced, non-judgmental essays for the girls who are just-not-sure don’t erect themselves. this is that essay.
LETS TAKE “COMPHET” FOR WHAT IT IS (AND WHAT IT *ISN’T*)
we must address the elephant in the room. she stinks and we can’t ignore the wafting odor. cue: the lesbian masterdoc.
created in 2018 by a user who now identifies as bisexual, the masterdoc serves as a starting point for many sexually confused, gen z teens. the consensus toward the masterdoc lies in a haunting battlefield, most believing it to be either the gay-magnum opus or inaccurate witchcraft. while i adopt a switzerland attitude, i cannot ignore the piece’s rapid reintroduction of the term comphet into the internet zeitgeist.
Verity Ritchie, proud bisexual, transgender, and doctor-who-stan, posits that the masterdoc provides an inconclusive view on diagnosing lesbianism in her video essay below. i agree with her analysis. the masterdoc allowed me to further understand my attraction to women but did not help me discern my lack of attraction to men.
[Timestamp: 0:00- 5:33 or so…]
i am uninterested in debating whether or not bisexuals can experience comphet; however, i am interested in examining Verity’s distinction between Adrienne Rich’s compulsory heterosexuality model and the internet’s version of comphet. just as verity suggests, Rich’s original sentiments can be used to argue a bottom-up, political approach to lesbianism. through taking her words (or rather, a 19 year olds *interpretation* of her words) as law, many conflate comphet with a real, significant attraction to men.
it is this appropriation of the comphet term that creates confusion between questioning lesbians who settle with stomachable man-traits and bisexual women with a preference. meanwhile, established gays post reddit-outrage. the cycle continues.
to minimize an over-identification with comphet when it doesn’t apply, we must view the concept for what it is: a means to describe the process with which heteropatriarchy divorces us from ourselves and our desires, making us complicit to our dissatisfaction and– in some cases– our suffering.
while Rich makes frivolous leaps to position lesbianism as a moral standard, she also makes many correct assertions about heterosexuality as a means of control. for example, Rich references “the [right wing’s] message to women [as] the emotional and sexual property of men, and that the autonomy… of women threaten the family, religion, and state.” she also details that the “institutions by which women have… been controlled…are being strengthened by legislation, religious fiat, media imagery, and efforts at censorship.”2
two years preceding, Audre Lorde came to a similar conclusion. Lorde emphasizes the importance of what she calls the erotic, or “an assertion of the lifeforce of women as we reclaim various aspects of our lives– loving, included.” she believes that if we are to harness such a consciousness, we resist oppression. Lorde notes that we “distrust that power which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge. we have been warned against it all our lives by the male world, which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the service of men.”3
today, we face parallel systems of control. women– let alone queer people– all over the us face increasing threats to our rights. it is in this censorship– in this lack of exposure to alternative options– in this uplifting of our subjugation, where inexperienced lesbians may garner a complex response to sexual self discovery. if a living thing has never the sun, they make the best out of the dirt– the underground– the squalor.
if we consider comphet as a form of oppression that renders us complicit to our own despair, then understanding one’s identity hinges on deep, personal connections to eroticism. identity occupies a space too complex to be wiki-howed, masterdoc-ed, or nailed as soon as we walk out of the cooch. i would know.
HERE’S WHAT HELPED ME
i learned about the models of attraction, releasing myself from fictional-man bisexuality:
at the core, i am an artist who recognizes beautiful things.
differentiating between aesthetic and sexual attraction transformed my worldview. when i gave myself the freedom to process aesthetic attraction without feeling a pressure– and yes, there is a pressure– to do anything about or assign meaning to it, i became attuned to the respective voices that belong to my eyes and p*ssy.
for example, i am an avid Doctor Who enjoyer. i’ve written about the integral ways the tv show developed my concepts of sensuality, love, and compassion. i’ve admired fan cams– i’ve prowled tumblr. if i was more into fan fiction, maybe i’d even be into the smut of it all. my giddiness toward the actors and actresses playing the Doctor stem from a deep, childhood admiration a sexual lens cannot define. in contrast, i harbor a distinct call to action in my bones when i see boob physics. i will not equate my parasocial love for a beautiful character, story, and pile of velocity edits to real life sexual attraction. i don’t think you should, either.
without going into the complexities of the differences between fantasy and reality, i must address the end of this particular thread in r/actuallylesbian. while i definitely don’t struggle with *wanting* to fuck a man (real or celebrity,) i’m not placing lesbians who feel giddy toward spencer reid on trial. giggling around a hot person or velocity edit could indicate your sexual desire or that you are giggly around hot people. and hey– a chuckle might constitute your bisexuality, but my lifelong stud girlfriend and i hehe-ing about penn badgley once in a while just doesn’t make the bisexual cut.
i stopped thinking about what i used to be, accepted change, and focused on what i wanted in the present:
unfortunately, i am the opposite of a gold star. i say this with no hatred or judgement toward my fellow late-lifers, but i would have enjoyed romance more if i came out earlier. that being said, ruminating on the way i used to relate to men never made me closer to understanding my desire as it stands.
some lesbians identify feelings of detachment while dating their ex-boyfriends. i, on the other hand, thought i was experiencing love. i recall, both, a fondness toward my high school boyfriend and a nagging sensation that i was missing something.
for a while, i ruminated on these past feelings. if i only like girls now, how did i feel xyz for a man, back then? was it real? was it love?
the fact of the matter is, although i do believe my past attachments to men stem from comphet, i am disinterested in quantifying my past to justify what i feel now. for example, i identified as straight throughout the majority of my life and, ignoring any indications that came my way, did not know i liked girls. it is no surprise, then, that i ignored any possibility that i might not like men when the time came. the brain is a silly place.
to combat rumination, i look at life from moment to moment. sexual orientation can be static for some, like my girlfriend. others experience sexual fluidity— the ability for one’s sexuality to change throughout their lifetime. it is most evident in younger folks.4 this phenomena is distinct from bisexuality:
this is not to say that every lesbian arrives at their identity from a sexually fluid place, of course. Adrienne Rich, correctly, identifies that “the possibility of a woman who does not exist sexually for men… is buried, erased, occluded, distorted, misnamed, and driven underground.”2 due to this erasure, the militant internet-lesbian originates in hopes to protect an identity many people erase and of which it’s participants are certain. in any case, suggesting that someone who has (or has not) experienced fluidity in the past will be fluid in the future is inappropriate.
i am, personally, too grown to tally up my previous wants. maybe i experienced sexual fluidity in my lifespan– maybe i was deeply entrenched in comphet. does it matter?
i used to wear adidas sambas. i don’t trust or understand the bitch who wore that shoe. she must have found some value in that model, or maybe she thought it was cool because her classmate’s wore them. whatever. if i ever changed my mind and want to wear them again (i won’t) i will reevaluate my sense of style, then. no big deal.
i wanted more out of sex. desire is not just a sensation:
though i advocate against ruminating on the past, taking a brief look at my closeted life sheds light on my journey— particularly my relationship with sex.
i got lucky with a myriad of giving male partners. however, if these men could not bring me to the finish line quickly, i would lose feelings at an alarming pace. i even found myself begging that I could hold out my ‘infatuation’ for *just* a bit longer. for me, sex became an internal and unspoken game of cat and mouse where i did whatever mental gymnastics necessary to reach peak.
i attributed this disinterest to an extreme form of feminism— a protest against the orgasm gap. but, talking to my bisexual peers surprised me. they revealed many ways i had ignored my own discomfort. although i framed encounters with men as pleasurable— and perhaps the sensation felt nice— i would dissociate from my body. i required an intense focus on random mind-landscapes to cum. if i looked at or listened to him too intensely, i became grossed out. i thought this was commonplace. bisexual women, although varied in their interests, generally like looking at a man fucking them. it turns them on. even though they may not reach orgasm, they enjoy the sights and smells of sexual contact with a man. additionally, while many bisexual women feel uncomfortable by a heterosexist performance of sex, they do not always feel like they are performing (and they *definitely* do not only focus on things that look feminine to distract from their discomfort.)
we are taught that the only ‘real lesbians’ experience extreme distress during sex with men, albeit penetration. and while some do, i was able to ignore my desire enough to find gratification. many, previously married lesbians, resonate. surviving isn’t living. it’s okay to want more.
now that i have a good amount of lesbian sex under my belt (and there are so many kinds of lesbian sex with various kinds of bodies/parts— might i add,) i am transformed. today, i gain a thrill from just getting close to my girlfriend’s body. i now see what i had been tolerating and what comes naturally to me. my mind needs no convincing– my desire is spontaneous, even. furthermore, i don’t require an orgasm to find satisfaction in touching my girlfriend– i am too rooted in my body to care about the outcome for myself. i reached my second puberty. what did Audre Lorde say about the erotic? it is nonrational.
i wish i could go back in time to the Anuhea on the edge of her bed, nauseated and alone, to tell her there are other options.
i demanded that love be more than a chase for attention:
when i sought out men, i looked for signs of their interest in me rather than being in tune with my own wants. i framed the process as developing attraction through ‘personality.’ it lacked a natural flow or pattern. i figured i must be demisexual.
furthermore, when i locked a man down, i felt as if i made a sacrifice in my choosing of them. this sacrifice became something i leveraged. should i have perceived my boyfriend to be attracted to another woman, i raised hell. if i had given up so much to be with a man– locking away my desire for women, being unable to find any attraction toward other men, and feeling broken all the while– why couldn’t they do the same? my attachment to being chosen became a driving force in my heterosexual relationships. loving attention is not love.
in addition to this revelation, i also realized that my quest for male attention came from a burning desire for platonic male affection, care, and community. i asked myself this question, recently:
if any of my exes could believe me valuable *without* giving them sex, would i have had sex with them? if i could maintain personal, deep friendships with these men– still been awarded attention, praise, and personhood– would i have steered our fate toward romance?
the thought brings tears to my eyes. no. i wouldn’t have.
i am not demisexual. i find many women beautiful without manufacturing reasons why. when love, desire, and pleasure finds you, there is no bargain.
i allowed myself a big #gaymoment and listened to my gut:
i stayed in a lesbian couple's home for the first time in 2021. i hadn’t spent time at a lesbian couple’s house aside from my two, middle aged aunties. these lesbians were young. a fascination hung in the room between them and i, flitting between my ears. i hoped they couldn’t tell. i asked to see their groceries in their cupboard, tracing the cheer-i-os.
when i finally asked to use their shower, i picked through their various shower materials: aussie shampoo on the left. herbal essences on the right. it’s-a-10 serum where the soap should be. a dove bar in the corner. detangler. hair catcher in the drain. two loofahs in opposite colors.
then, the thought arrived– blaring– from somewhere so deep i thought it was god:
you do not want a man’s things in your shower.
i had a boyfriend at the time. he was kind. i liked him– or did i? my performance cracked like porcelain as their bathroom haunted me. i took my hydroxyzine, trying to forget the reality that two young women could, in fact, share amongst themselves. i went to sleep, repeating: this is nonrational.
i realize now that a perfect, nuclear, domestic reality with a man feels, at best, dull and, at worst, lynchian (rip). to test this theory, i think about waking up next to a perfect man, 20 years from now. i construct his quiet snores, mimicking a kind of meditation. i stitch together his back muscles and stubble. in this imagining, i know he will receive me as he wakes. i know he will greet our kids as they jump on the bed asking for cereal. the image is a skewed painting– laughter echoing in the halls. i think of this reality with so much detail that i make an impression of this man’s hardness against my back. but, where many would find solace in this exercise, i only feel constriction. artifice. to know a man– for him to know me as a satisfied, whole woman–is impossible. unwanted.
although there is a chance that heterosexual and bisexual women feel dread toward domestic futures with sub-par or dangerous men, they do not fear life with an attentive, handsome, and perfect, one.
i do not want any man’s things in my shower. ever.
i let go of the why:
Lorde states that “we have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves.”3 i agree. many people hold back from identifying as a lesbian, even though they feel they are, because they find reasons to invalidate themselves. we are conditioned to have a reason and justification for everything, especially lesbianism. the world asks us why we aren’t holding out for the ‘perfect’ man or whether we have considered that we are not gay and just traumatized. we follow suit, subjugating our yes.
this excerpt from Glennon Doyle’s untamed offers an alternative perspective to these questions. in a world that demands a justification for our desire, Doyle proposes that, should we become strong enough to acknowledge it, we maintain flippancy toward this inquiry. a late in life lesbian, Doyle is often confronted with people asking ‘why’ she ‘chose this for herself.’ while she contends that orientation cannot be a choice, she entertains this reasoning with irony:
what if i have come to see same-gender love as a really solid choice— just a brilliant idea? something i would highly recommend?
and what if i demand freedom not because i was ‘born this way’ and ‘can’t help it’ but because i can do whatever i choose to do with my love and my body from year to year, moment to moment—because i’m a grown woman who does not need any excuse to live however i want to live and love whomever i want to love? 5
what if, indeed, Glennon. what if, indeed.
SOMETIMES, WHAT YOU WANT IS WHO YOU ARE. GO TOUCH GRASS
to know my desire– to “become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, [and] self-denial–” i gave myself permission to be a lesbian if i wanted to be, went outside, and i found that i was one.3 if i had not given myself this freedom, i wonder if i would have rationalized myself into domestic life with a man, underpinning my every breath with an excruciating itch.
sometimes, our innermost truth comes from that non-rational, silly thing– that stomachache– that adventure in a strangers shower– that deep current moving through you when you see her, hair tucked into a beanie and eyes sparkling, outside of your favorite club.
your yes can be a yes. to find your yes, you must divorce yourself from any and all tiktok videos, reddit rules, and tumblr documents– even this substack.
“this brings me to the last consideration of the erotic. to share the power of each other’s feelings is different from using another’s feelings as we would use a kleenex. when we look the other way from our experience, erotic or otherwise, we use rather than share the feelings of those others who participate in the experience with us. and use without consent of the used is abuse….
when we look away from the importance of the erotic in the development and sustenance of our power, or when we look away from ourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert with others, we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy in the satisfying, rather than make connection with our similarities and our differences. to refuse to be conscious of what we are feeling at any time, however comfortable that might seem, is to deny a large part of the experience, and to allow ourselves to be reduced to the pornographic, the abused, and the absurd.”3
to finish, i must leave you with this quote of Audre Lorde urging you to touch grass, like i am. and, although i did not like this movie as much as it spoke to me, i must remind you:
traversing sharp coral to a small beach on the west side of my island, my darling takes me in her arms. shallow water laps at my bikini line. so do her fingers. we laugh about something innocuous. i almost don’t hear her at first.
will you be my girlfriend?
i shoot back a reply– one that empties out of me, nonrational and pure:
yes yes yes.
1. Jones J. LGBTQ+ Identification in U.S. Now at 7.6% [Internet]. Gallup. 2024. Available from: https://news.gallup.com/poll/611864/lgbtq-identification.aspx
2. Rich A. Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. Journal of Women’s History. 1980;15(3):11–48.
3. Shaw A, Lorde A, Hall JW. Conversations with Audre Lorde. World Literature Today. 2006;80(1):60.
4. Katz-Wise SL. Sexual fluidity and the diversity of sexual orientation [Internet]. Harvard Health. 2022. Available from: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/sexual-fluidity-and-the-diversity-of-sexual-orientation-202203312717
5.Doyle G. Untamed. New York: The Dial Press; 2020.
absolutely stunning. as a bi woman who is done dating men i always pre-emptively wince when i see The Document cited because of how much damage i do think the re-definition of comphet has done those online circles - but this was careful, thoughtful, and laced through with a compassion and love for women that i feel so often is bewilderingly absent in "sapphic" essays (from both sides of the aisle). your joy and comfort is contagious. 💘
Literally told myself I can’t be a lesbian because I find men aesthetically attractive sometimes but they don’t move me emotionally, romantically or physically…the mental gymnastics are just ridiculous (also gonna re-read this over and over, thank you 🙏🏾)