Lesbian Visibility Day and Week 2022

Happy Lesbian Visibility Day, which takes place during Lesbian Visibility Week! 🥳🎉🎊🎉🎈🎇🎆🥂🍾👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩💏👩‍❤️‍👩💑👩🏽‍🤝‍👩🏻👭🏿👩🏿‍🤝‍👩🏻👭🏽🧑🏻‍🤝‍🧑🏻🧑🏿‍🤝‍🧑🏿🧑🏿‍🤝‍🧑🏻🧑🏽‍🤝‍🧑🏼 🏳️‍🌈 I would add a gender inclusive lesbian flag emoji at this point but there isn't one available on my keyboard 😢 (neither has the trans, BAME and intersex inclusive rainbow flag entered my emoji world yet 😢) 

As we celebrate Lesbian Visibility Day and Week, I'd like to raise awareness of how to be clearly gender inclusive of all lesbians, rather than overfocusing on cisgender 'femme' lesbians. One way is to include non-binary emojis alongside the female ones, and use the racially inclusive ones too. Although there is no official lesbian flag, the lesbian community prefer being clearly gender inclusive in their flag, especially to incorporate the butch, gender non-conforming, non-binary and trans women who weren't represented in the earlier flags, namely the flag dubbed the 'lipstick lesbian flag' and its variant which merely left out the lipstick lips on it. The best example of this is the flag Emily Gwen has given us, which she states represents all lesbians. It's easy to spot if you know what to look for: it has three orange stripes at the top of its 7 stripes. Here's a picture of it on her website, as well as her inclusive statement and how she intends it to belong to the lesbian community:

https://lesbianflaguse.carrd.co/

There is also a five stripe version that looks very similar, but it is mostly used just to be cost effective to produce. However, it doesn't have all the meanings behind it due to its lack of two colours (the middle orange and middle pink) and its colour symbolism can be labelled in vitally different ways so I think it's best to stick to Emily's version for clarity. The Emily Gwen lesbian flag is the colour scheme I use in my Face2Face (Non-binary Genderfluid) Lesbians art series. I've written a blog post for the series's one year anniversary and to celebrate Lesbian Visibility Day and Week 2022. You can view the artwork and read about it here .

This artwork includes an original miniature portrait of two famous upper-class lesbians in history, who are often referred to as the Ladies of Llangollen. Their names were the Rt. Hon. Lady Eleanor Butler (1739-1829) and Sarah Ponsonby (1755-1831) and they left Ireland and their unsupportive family to set up a home in Wales and  live together openly as lesbians for half a century. They are seen in portraits wearing top hats and masculine attire. I don't believe those who try to claim they didn't have a sexual relationship, especially since many of their pet dogs were called Sappho! 😅 They even received notable guests who enjoyed their company, such as Wordsworth, who even wrote a sonnet about them, titled "To the Lady E.B and the Hon. Miss P", which you can read on the internet, such as here . This certainly boosted their visibility. I'm still not sure about all of the wording in it, although I do like the fact that it refers to them as 'in love'! 💞🌈 This is certainly an improvement on the 18th century female poet, Anna Seward, who used the phrase "chaste provinciality" in her 1796 poem about them 🙄. Anne Lister (1791-1840) visited them and was inspired to live like them and she definitely had sexual relationships with women, as her diaries show. The second series of the TV drama 'Gentleman Jack', which brings her diaries to life, is currently airing. This programme also gives visibility to not only lesbian relationships within an historical context but also shows a positive depiction of muscular and so-called masculine, gender non-conforming women.

Anne Lister is not the only visible lesbian in history. Another lesbian who lived openly and preferred wearing tailored suits and ties to typically feminine attire was the 19th-20th century composer and suffragette, Ethel Smyth (1858-1944). 

Lister also had what is considered the first (unofficial) lesbian marriage ceremony with Ann Walker in 1834, which goes to show that there has always been an overwhelming demand for same-sex marriage. It's about love, commitment, faithfulness and monogamy, not some ideology. Same-sex marriage is also about equal rights, not about replacing or competing with heterosexual marriage! Marriage is not something that is an automatic right for only heterosexuals, it's an automatic, human right for everyone, regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

In accordance with this, UK law allows everyone over 18 in England and Wales (over 16 in Scotland and without parental consent), regardless of who they are, to marry. This is in step with the law on consent - anybody over 18 years old can give their consent, whether it's sex (although the age of consent for sexual consent is 16 in the UK) or anything else. It's not up to anyone else to question their capacity or ability to consent, it's simply up to the person consenting to make up their own mind. It's not for anyone to, anonymously or otherwise, fabricate or superimpose their own prejudices, deep biases or own bad personal experience onto other people and their relationships and start assuming those people have an unhealthy power relation and dominance dynamic that simply doesn't exist in that relationship! And that's true for both lesbian and heterosexual relationships. 

Love is a human right, as is marriage, including choosing to have a family! 

Why is lesbian visibility important and should be celebrated as a day and week?

Because lesbians are part of history and we shouldn't be rewriting and erasing people out of history. Lesbians have had very poor visibility even to the extent that they have been seen as having only platonic, friendship type relationships.

Because it gives girls and women support and assurance that it's OK to be a lesbian and have gay relationships and marry a lesbian and possibly have children with them. (Something they have been sorely deprived of for centuries.)

Knowing this creates happiness, makes people mentally stable and at peace with themselves helping them to make the right decision for themselves and others - a lesbian marrying a heterosexual man creates an unhappy and unharmonious relationship for both!