October 8 is International Lesbian Day. In its honor, we’re posting another article about the experiences of ace and aro people who identify as lesbians. This includes bi, pan, and other mspec lesbians, they/them and he/him lesbians, non-binary and trans lesbians, sapphics, and anyone else who feels connected to the lesbian identity. Thank you so much to all our contributors!
Introductions
A – I identify as a grayromantic asexual lesbian because I experience romantic attraction rarely and not strongly, I experience no sexual attraction, but I feel overall more attraction to femininity. This attraction is hard for me to define, but I do experience it frequently and I feel connected to the label lesbian as a result.
Bee – I’m an aroace lesbian w strongly aesthetic attraction
Del – I identify as a aceflux lesbian
Fitz – I’m a bambi lesbian nonbinary man; lesbian, asexual, butch
Haf – I’m a nonbinary lesbian or trixic. I’m asexual and somewhere on the aro spectrum, I’m still figuring that out but I believe I’m either demiromantic or greyromantic.
Hazel – I’d like to be tagged on tumblr, with my main account @pailettehazel .
Koko -. Within the lesbian community, I identify as bambi lesbian (a term that originated in 1980s, referring to lesbians who deprioritize sexual aspects of romantic relationships). It’s already a term which technically falls under aspec, but I also use labels ‘asexual homoromantic’, since they’re more known within aspec community.
Mariah – I consider myself grey-ace, grey-aro, and a lesbian. I use she/they pronouns
Phoenix – Aromantic lesbian
Questions
How do you feel connected to/define the lesbian label or community?
A: I define the label lesbian as anyone who is queerly attracted to femininity, as I think that it gives room for many different experiences that diversify our community.
Bee: I have a very strong aesthetic attraction towards people who mostly identify as women or non-binary and since i have yet to feel any kind of attraction to anyone who ids as a man i feel extremely connected to the lesbian label and community
Del: I feel connected to the lesbian label/community because its a big part of who i am. ive always liked girls, so its just where i feel i belong.
Fitz: I define lesbian as a queer attraction to women as well as a gender for some people. I have a queer attraction to women and a tie to the term lesbian and the history of lesbians (as trans men and nonbinary people have been part of the community and have stand united with lesbians for decades).
Haf: For me personally the experience of being lesbian-aligned and aspec were so similar that it took me years after discovering the online LGBT community to figure out I was both. The experience of being perceived as a woman with no interest in men had a similar effect on my life and response from those around me whether it was during times when I identified as only lesbian, only asexual, or both. In short I definitely feel like both identities have always been intertwined for me both inwardly and outwardly
Hazel: I feel connected to the lesbian label because I am a woman, attracted to women. I am not certain about the community, as I’m still fairly young (and live closeted, in the countryside) so I cant easily attend events and such. I learned about Queer stuff online and continue to get most of my information/support from there.
Koko: For me, definitions that are assigned to certain labels are just generic, formal descriptions. If someone identifies with a certain label, if they feel like they belong to that community – then they do. That’s all there is to it.
Mariah: I define being a lesbian as a non-man loving non-men, and I connect to the lesbian label as someone who is only attracted to non-men.
Phoenix: My love for women/woman-aligned people is what part of what connects me to my lesbian identity. Having an intimate relationship with one makes me feel satisfied and happy. The other part is my complete and total lack of attraction towards men/man-aligned people. Seriously, once I find out a person is a man or man-aligned, any attraction (besides platonic) disappears. Having those exact experiences makes me feel like a lesbian and more connected to other lesbians.
How does being a lesbian or lesbian aligned person intersect with being aspec for you?
A: It’s very challenging for me, because I feel like I should be romantically/sexually attracted to women, but I don’t experience that. I also like to think about being in love with a woman, but I’m unsure if that will ever happen due to my aro-ness. Overall though, I’m proud of being a lesbian and also being aspec, despite the difficulties, because it lets me feel this wonderful kind of queer attraction
Del: it intersected when it finally clicked that i just didn’t like boys in any sort of way. romantically, sexually…it just wasn’t me. i looked a little deeper and found that i wasnt super sexually attracted to women either (most of the time).
Fitz: My lesbianism barely, if ever, touches the sexual side of human behavior. It has made me feel isolated in the community but also allowed for me to find many other people to relate to. For instance, finding out bambi lesbian is a historical term has made me extremely ecstatic and made me feel at home in my lesbianism and aceness.
Haf: In the first online aspec circles I encountered, I’ve seen an assumption that all aspec people are aroace with no attraction or interest in relationships at all. Although this is usually just used in a jokey or meme context, seeing this sentiment repeated so much with no alternative can be slightly alienating to those aspec people who are interested in romantic or sexual relationships. When I first realised my romantic attraction to my current partner back when these groups were my only exposure to the aspec community at large, I did question whether this meant I wasn’t really aspec/would no longer be welcome/would be seen as ‘aspec lite’. Fortunately now I see more aspec people talking about their relationships and the fact that being aspec is not black and white but a spectrum, and I doubt I would have felt the way I did if I was to have discovered the community today
Hazel: I learned I was asexual first. This was integral for my self identifying as a lesbian, because I hadn’t realised yet Romantic attraction could be felt without sexual attraction. Once I realized, I felt relieved that this was something others felt as well.
Koko: I’m asexual and homoromantic, so the intersection isn’t that confusing. I feel romantically attracted to women, so I’m a lesbian, but I almost never feel sexual attraction, so I’m also asexual.
Mariah: As a grey-aroace lesbian, I find that I am attracted to someone romantically when I desire emotional intimacy and physical closeness or affection. Afterwards, I can experience varying degrees of sexual attraction with that person.
Phoenix: I’ve always viewed my aromanticism and my lesbianism as two separate things. The two identities don’t really affect each other, but they do affect how I interact with the world. Together it can make me feel alienated, but being able to indulge in experiences that satisfy both identities can also be so liberating.
How is your experience in aspec communities impacted by being a lesbian or lesbian-aligned?
Bee: It can feel a bit isolating to be an oriented aroace and sometimes it feels like i’m completely alone even though i know that there are more people like me out there it just feels like i don’t belong on the aspec community because i do feel some kind of attraction and i don’t belong on the lesbian community cause i don’t feel the sexual and romantic attraction but i think that’s mostly due to internalized stuff and not so much because of the actual communities
Del: I’m not a major part of any aspec communties, really, but it doesn’t affect it much.
Fitz: I do not feel that my aceness nor experiences in the aspec communities have been impacted by my lesbianism. Of course, however, I cannot say the same for the other way around.
Haf: Personally I encountered online lesbian communities much later than the aspec ones and am not as involved with them. I see a fair bit of representation for bambi lesbians, which refers to lesbians who generally are not interested in sexual relationships. I don’t always feel welcome in lesbian spaces which is the main reason I’m less involved in them, but for me that’s much more because of my nonbinary identity than my aspec one
Hazel: From my limited experience in (online,) aspec communities, I have found that most ace/aro spec people don’t care much about your romantic/aesthetic attraction. I’d say the majority of them is also another kind of queer next to being ace.
Koko: I never felt excluded from the aspec community because of being ‘partially’ lesbian – here, I feel comfortable with conversations on any type of attraction, whether it’s one I’m experiencing or not. Everyone just listens each other out, accepts diversity within community.
Mariah: I am always very welcomed by aspec communities, especially because they understand both the a-spectrum and sapphic relationships, which makes it easy to feel supported.
How is your experience with other lesbians or in lesbian communities impacted by being aspec?
A: I feel alienated by conversations about lesbian sex, because while I recognize that the normalization of queer sex is hugely important, and I fully believe in celebrating sex and sexuality, I’m also sex-repulsed, and knowing that that experience would be uncomfortable for me makes me feel different from everyone else
Bee: i have this one lesbian friend who is very much not aroace and she doesn’t understand how i can call myself a lesbian and not want to kiss girls and not want to do more than holding hands and it can feel extremely invalidating and isolating. i know not everyone is like that but a lot of people are and it’s so exhaustive to have to keep explaining myself to them and try to make them understand how i still belong on the lesbian community even if i’m aroace
Fitz: I’ve felt isolated, ridiculed, infantilized, but also it has allowed me to focus a lot on the different aspects of attraction.
Haf: Uno reverse card- I realised I was aspec first! For a while I identified as ‘asexual’, but what I actually meant by that term at the time was aroace (because due to the communities I was interacting with at the time I believed that the only options were allo-allo or aroace). I then identified as quoiromantic for a while as I believed I had felt attraction on rare occasions but was overall very confused about everything. It took me directly questioning the fact that the only people I’d ever felt hints of romantic attraction to all happened to be women or woman-aligned, and that I had always had significantly more aesthetic attraction to woman-aligned people, that I finally realised I was sapphic. I did question my aspec identity slightly for the reasons I laid out (the communities I was interacting with thought in very black and white terms and I thought the only options were fully aroace or fully allo because of this) but didn’t change the labels I use.
Hazel: Lesbian communities are wonderful, from my limited exposure haha. There is somewhat of a focus on sex, which I don’t fault them for: after all, it is a huge part of allo-lesbians’ identity which is important to reclaim.
Koko: In lesbian communities, I often feel a bit alienated. Whenever people start talking about sexual attraction, I slowly back off while telling awkward jokes about my asexuality, and others often just agree that I should quit the conversation.
Mariah: In some lesbian spaces, I can feel out of place as someone who is also aspec, especially when being sapphic is conflated with allonormativity. I have been infantilized and encountered aphobia by other lesbians, creating unwelcoming spaces at times.
Phoenix: The sapphic space can have a huge focus on romantic relationships – cottagecore fantasies, sappy poetry, yearning posts about wanting to date for miles. There’s nothing wrong with that, but as an alloaro lesbian myself, it’s hard to relate. I don’t want a sickly sweet love story. I want a good friend who wants to be sexually intimate. It can be alienating because some sapphics & lesbians want to focus only on the romance – it feels like they want to exclude anything else.
Upon realizing that you were aspec, did you question or change your lesbian orientation?
Bee: No.
Fitz: I discovered I was ace first before ever questioning my attraction towards people in other ways, so no, I did not.
Hazel: It was the other way around. I first discovered I was Asexual, in high school. Then I identified as demiromantic for a while, until I got my first crush on a girl in university. That is when I started questioning things again. I was familiar with the label ‘bambi lesbian’, so I clung to that as some kind of reassurance of what I could be.
Koko: Upon discovering my asexuality, I changed my label from lesbian to bambi lesbian and didn’t even think of properly entering aspec community, but gradually I started identifying with it more, eventually accepting the asexuality label.
Mariah: I realized I was aspec very early on, and it actually took me longer to realize I was a lesbian, specifically because I did not experience the immediate sexual or romantic attraction to people that everyone said a lesbian was supposed to have.
How could aspec communities better support you?
Bee: I’m not really sure, right now i feel like i just need to understand myself better before i can answer that
Fitz: Listening to other aspecs and stop repeating the same hateful comments thrown at us.
Haf: I feel like most aspec communities today are incredibly inclusive in my experience
Hazel: Aspec communities have been great, especially in my limited experience and possibilities. I follow several blogs/organisations on social media and those help me feel valued and assured in my identity as Ace Lesbian. Aspec communities are usually already well informed about other queer identities. Asexuality is a lesser known queer identity, so anyone identifying as such most likely has done their research, digging past the more well known spots.
What do you wish allo people knew about you or other aspec lesbians or lesbian aligned people?
A: That it’s possible to be both aromantic and asexual, and still be just as valid as any other lesbian. That being aspec and a lesbian do not contradict, and do not make each other less valid. That even though I might not feel sexual/romantic attraction as much as an allo person, I can still want and be in healthy, committed relationships
Bee: that we’re valid!!!!! that our orientation is still valid even if they can’t relate to it or can’t understand it, doesn’t make it any less real or valid
Fitz: I wish people of all genders and sexualities stopped pushing lesbianism into strictly a sexual thing (e.g. porn and the community’s overall oversexualization of all orientations).
Haf: My aspec and lesbian labels don’t infringe on each other. Being sapphic and experiencing some romantic attraction doesn’t make me less aspec, and being asexual and not experiencing much romantic attraction don’t make me less sapphic. (Joke-Style) Also, any men who try to hit on me have a double zero chance!
Hazel: I wish it was common knowledge among Allo people that sexual attraction isn’t needed for a healthy, fulfilling relationship. Once that is known, so many more possibilities open up, including relationships with the same gender.
Koko: I wish allos stopped assuming that all aspec lesbians are just traumatized, probably through sexual abuse, by men. While there are people like that, and it doesn’t make them any less valid, not all of us are! Asexuality isn’t some sort of mental issue.
Mariah: I wish more allo people would stop assuming I know nothing about sex, or automatically assume whether or not I want sex in a relationship. I also hope one day more allo people and allies know that aspec lesbians exist.
What do you wish other lesbians knew about you or other aspec lesbians or lesbian aligned people?
A: Same as above, but mostly that I can be an aspec lesbian and be just as much a lesbian as any other lesbian, and just as much aspec as any other aspec person.
Bee: that just because i don’t feel sexually and romantically attracted to them doesn’t mean i’m not attracted at all and doesn’t mean i’m faking whatever feelings i do have
Fitz: That we exist and our aspec identities do not negate other parts of us. I wish people would stop assuming they know things and listen to individuals about their own identities, experiences, wants, and needs.
Hazel: As for the lesbians- well, the same thing honestly. Love what yall are doing, but realise those experiences ain’t universal.
Haf: There are a lot of us! I don’t know the specifics but I have encountered so many other aspec lesbians in the general aspec and lesbian communities, I’d wager we make up a more significant chunk of both communities on the whole than many others in them realise
Koko: I wish that other lesbians understood that the double-label doesn’t mean that we’re confused, or indecisive, or greedy – it just means that we’re in the overlap between lesbian and aspec. That overlap exists and it’s, in itself, quite diverse.
Mariah: I wish more sapphics recognized that I am a lesbian, even if I don’t fit into their expectation of how a lesbian should experience attraction. Aspec lesbians would love if other sapphics made an effort to combat amatonormativity and allonormativity in queer circles.