Maybe the reason people find the lesbian label too restricting is out of a combination of:
It being the only sexual identity to the complete exclusion of men as both the subject and object of desire, and most people (even lesbians ourselves!) aren’t used to anything that completely excludes men, much less on the realm of sexuality.
Lesbians being the smallest sexual identity group, so naturally most people don’t relate to how attraction works for us.
If you, not being a lesbian, try to force yourself into the lesbian label, you’re gonna feel restricted, same as any bi or gay person would feel trying to make themselves fit the straight label. Do you understand that whether a label feels rigid or not is entirely subjective? It WILL feel restrictive if it’s not the right one for you.
I, being a lesbian, did in actual real life feel desperately restricted and suffocated by the bisexual label as well as the straight label, when I tried to force myself into each of them. I was always performing and policing my unattraction to men and punishing myself when I found myself not liking men “enough” (at all).
I didn’t feel unrestricted when I identified as bi, I felt trappedandconstrictedandthat’s not the fault of the bi label itself and much less was it a sign that the bi label needs redefining, it was a sign that I wasn’t bisexual.
That’s what we mean when we say if the lesbian label feels too rigid or restrictive to you that might be because you’re just not a lesbian, or you might have a lot of internalized lesbophobia (I definitely had the idea that “not giving men a chance” was mean/uptight/rigid/cruel so I didn’t want to be a lesbian in part because I didn’t want to be a Mean Dyke to the Poor Men who might desire me and thus had a “right” to a chance with me).
It’s not an insult at least when I say it. It’s just a fact.
I see a lot of posts about testing out labels to find the “comfortable” one and while they’re not necessarily wrong, what helped me come to terms with my sexuality was testing concepts instead. like, do I want to date women? would NOT dating men feel like a loss or a relief? etc. eventually after considering these I realised that there were no other word to describe me than “lesbian”, regardless of it being uncomfortable
honestly? straight men don’t even like women, they like the false and idealized versions of women they see in porn and on tv. they talk about real women (even their wives and girlfriends!) with thinly veiled disgust and condescension because they’d rather have sentient sex dolls than living, breathing human women with personalities and opinions. women love women better than men do because we actually love women.
its so funny when ppl say that ‘women can love each other more easily uwu’ like ya actually…the socially acceptable Love that women are permitted to have with each other is this highly specific & controlled hyper platonic shit and lesbians and bi women feel predatory, alienated, and fake their whole lives when they deviate from the Pure Chaste Friends narrative…like actual intense intimacy is in fact not encouraged between women, its not easy, and continuing that myth just makes wlw feel worse about themselves
The staging of a play in Ravi Jadhav’s short, Mitraa, during which Sumitra realises she is attracted to Nama. The film is based on Vijay Tendulkar’s 1981 play Mitrachi Goshta (A Friend’s Story) which is set in the 1940s and deals with a lesbian relationship.
The short is part of a film comprising 4 shorts based on poems, Bioscope.
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