“If You’re Not a Lesbian, How Will You Know What It’s Like?”
Interview with Sarah Juillard, Dutch market expert for underwriting and operations at Aspect Labs, on the importance of Lesbian Visibility Week
For Sarah, expressing her identity is a privacy issue. For example, she used to identity as “queer” exclusively, and often still does, “because it’s nice and general and doesn’t give away too much information.”
She thinks people might not realize “how much of yourself you’re giving away when you tell them fully what your identity is, because if I tell them I’m a lesbian, then they know I’m only into women, and then they start potentially asking questions.”
These aren’t necessarily rude or overly intrusive questions, Sarah says, but “that’s giving away quite a lot of personal information that I don’t always want to share with everyone. So I tended to use queer a lot just because it gave just enough information that I wasn’t bothered.”
Does this mean she’s uncomfortable identifying as a lesbian?
“I do use lesbian now because it is, in the end, the identity that does best describe me,” she says. Although she adds that it was always difficult growing up and being exposed from an early age to the idea that she would marry a man, a la classic Disney movies.
“As a little girl, you’re told you’re a little princess and you’re going to be marrying your prince before you even have a conscious sexuality,” she says. “It’s weird being told basically your whole life that you’re supposed to be marrying a man and then realizing that that’s not something you want.”
Sarah says that for a long time she assumed that although she was attracted to women, she would be attracted to a man once she found the right one. “Eventually I had to come to the conclusion that maybe there wasn’t ever going to be a man that would do it for me.”
“Earlier lesbian visibility will lead to more accepting future generations”
This is one reason she thinks lesbian visibility is important. Because, while she perceives that there is visibility for lesbian adults, “I don’t think that it’s necessarily very visible for kids. When I was growing up, I maybe knew what a lesbian was, because someone I knew had two mums, for example. But it’s not at all something that you would see in books, in movies, in the shows on TV.”
Her point is that “children are very accepting, and they’re the future. If they get lesbian visibility early by having it included in books, media, etc, then they are going to be a more accepting generation. Because if they view it as normal and as something that they could potentially be, it’s going to make it easier for future generations who might potentially identify as lesbian to go through that process of identifying as lesbian and of being accepting of each other.”
But this is just one important aspect of the need for lesbian visibility, Sarah believes.
“With each new generation, sexual identities change, and the connotations that go with them change. I think each new generation has a new definition of who they are, And it’s the same for sexualities. How I see myself as a lesbian is not necessarily how a lesbian saw themselves 50 years ago.”
“We don’t necessarily all understand each other”
Of course, this can lead to inter-generational conflict. As Sarah puts it, “even within the same identity, I don’t think we necessarily all understand each other and the experiences that we’ve had and what it means for us.”
Visibility therefore is important to help continue this inter-generational dialogue and to foster understanding where there are differences in how those who identify the same way see each other: “I think it’s important to learn from each other about your own identity.”
We talk for a while about how these challenges manifest in the workplace, and how organizations and co-workers could or should respond.
“In the workplace, because most people aren’t queer, they won’t update their ideas of what certain identities are. They’re only going to remember the depiction that they saw 10 or 20 years ago and that’s going to stick with them,” Sarah says.
“In that sense, it’s good to learn about how these different generations of lesbians see themselves, to challenge the stereotypes that people have about a certain identity.”
In practice, Sarah thinks companies should encourage this dialogue via presentations, roundtables, and other events, because these will help encourage that safe space for people to be interested and ask questions. And because, after all, “if you’re not a lesbian, how else are you going to understand what it’s like and what it means?”
“The in-between is not being shown”
Sarah has always been an active part of the lesbian and broader LGBTQ+ communities. While studying in the Netherlands, she was active in her university’s queer association. Now she has moved to the UK, she gravitates towards groups such as Link, and other LGBTQ+ networks and groups.
“I do gravitate towards other people from the LGBTQ community, because I think there is always a shared experience there, and it makes me feel safe,” she says.
Speaking of safety, how does she feel about the current global political backlash against diversity and certain LGBTQ+ identities?
“I know there’s a vibe shift, because you see it online and you see it in politics, but I think something that people forget a lot is in politics, and especially online, the only things that are really being shown are the extremes, the extreme opinions. The in-between is not really being shown.”
Sarah believes that in real life, “there is more acceptance and more inclusivity towards the queer community and the lesbian community, even though it’s not visible. And I think that’s always the positive bit that I grab onto; I know you can’t see it, because all you can hear and see is what’s on the internet and what’s going on in politics. But I don’t think that’s the average opinion.”
Most people are accepting, then?
“I just think most people are indifferent. And I don’t think that was the case a certain number of years ago. This is positive because, if anything, you don’t want people to treat you differently. If people are indifferent, in my opinion, that’s a good thing, because it means they don’t really care, and they will treat you the same.”
Or, to put it another way: “I don’t care that my colleagues are straight, and they don’t care that I’m lesbian. It doesn’t matter. And that means to me that there is equality.”
microaggressions compared to others in the community and may look for different kinds of connection or support,” she says.
“That’s why it’s so important to ensure their voices are heard and to build spaces and support structures that are genuinely inclusive of their experiences.”
“It’s difficult to identify differently, and people need to be sensitive to that”
But if there is one overarching message she wishes more people would understand about the challenges of being a lesbian in today’s world, what is it?
“People don’t necessarily realize how it is quite hard to identify differently, whatever that identity might be, including identifying as a lesbian. Even if it does now seem normal, it’s still not easy,” Sarah says.
“I think it’s important for people to be sensitive towards that, towards the knowledge that it’s difficult to identify differently and have to change your whole world view when you’re 15 or 16 and you realize that you’re going to have to be different and figure out what that means for you.”
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