If you’ve been following us since our burst onto the local scene at Northampton Pride 2022 you’ll know this was the slogan we were running with. We’ve been aware that since then, we left this pretty much unexplained. We’ve been saying we started this group to combat lesbian erasure and lesbophobia within the LGBT community and outside of it, but unless you’ve experienced this first hand you may not know exactly what we mean. 

The initial spark that ignited our passion to organise was attending Northampton pride this year and finding that for a third year, there were no lesbian flags on any of the stalls for local LGBT community groups. These are the groups that are supposed to represent the entire LGBTQ+ community within Northanpton but were leaving out lesbians, the first letter, despite having flags and resources for many of the other labels under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. There’s a point where this is no longer a coincidence or an accident and is outright erasure. The sentiment, spoken or unspoken, seems to be that lesbians have privilage over many other members of the LGBT community or that we already have enough help and representation and its time to step aside. 

To demonstrate exactly what we are talking about, I’ve conducted a quick informal experiment. I looked through the instagrams of three well known LGBT community groups from Northamptonshire to track how many resources, mentions and positivity posts they have posted for different identities under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. This experiment was about representation as a whole, not specific groups so I have chosen not to name them to avoid any unfairness but I tried to pick groups that were representative of the Northamptonshire area. 

I have viewed the first 75 posts of each group’s instagram account, not including current stories or reels, starting from most recent to try and get a fair representation of each group’s posts. 

To count each instance of representation I am including:

• Positivity posts for specific identities or identity umbrellas
• Specific mentions of identities in writing describing that community as a whole or a specific person
• Worldwide and nationwide events
• Posts about historic events
• Posts about current events, politics, laws and legislation
• Information about current and historic notable figures
• Posts about or photos of leaflets for specific resources
• Events run by the group
• Photos and graphics of flags

I am not including:

• More than one post about the same event unless it is weekly, monthly or yearly (only counting one post for each time the event comes back around)
• Photos of the same stall, event or meeting place from other angles so as not to count the same flags and resources more than once
• Photos of a stall or meeting place from different days unless there is a new instance of a resource or flag not yet counted
• Hashtags under each post as many accounts post the same hashtags regardless of post content

I have also counted posts or mentions that do not specify groups by individual name but are aimed at the LGBTQ+ community as a whole. Obviously as all three of these groups are aimed at the wider community, I would expect general posts to be more frequent than posts for specific identities so this was counted to show perspective on the other data. My expectations were that general mentions would outweigh specific mentions but I hoped that specific mentions would be fairly equal across all major identities. 

Data collected 29/09/22

[For instances of LGBTQ+ or general representation I am counting: all instances of the rainbow or progress pride flag, LGBT, LGBTQ+ or any other variations of the acronym, queer community, gay community or any other terms referring to the community as a whole.
For instances of Trans/Nonbinary representation I am counting: all flags associated with trans, nonbinary or any other identities under the trans/nonbinary umbrella, all trans/nonbinary identity labels and any mentions of individuals who identify with these labels.
For instances of Bi/Pan+ representation I am counting: all flags associated with bisexual, pansexual and any other multisexual identities or identities characterised by being attracted to multiple sexes and gender identities and any mentions of individuals who identify with these labels.
For instances of Gay men representation I am counting: All instances of the word gay when referring to a man or man aligned person, all mentions of individuals who identify with these labels, all uses of symbols associated with gay men specifically rather than the community as a whole.
For instances of Lesbian representation I am counting: All instances of the lipstick lesbian, femme lesbian, sunset, labrys or any other variation of the lesbian flag, all instances of the word when gay when referring to a woman or woman aligned person, the word lesbian, the word sapphic, the acronym WLW and all mentions of individuals who identify with these labels]

In all of these bar charts LGBTQ+ or mentions of the community as a whole are most frequent which is what I would expect from groups representing the LGBTQ+ community as a whole. But the mentions for other groups have trans and nonbinary identites coming in second and bi/pan+, gay men and lesbians not even entering double digits. Lesbians have the least mentions in two out of the three groups.

It’s not that we are wanting to be put above any of these other identites, but that these groups claim to represent the LGBTQ+ society as a whole so we should expect fairly equal representation. For some reason, mentions of lesbians and gay men seem to be very infrequent. Especially bearing in mind that I am counting images of flags, including in the background of photographs, as part of this representation. If I had counted only the words themselves being used the instances of representation would have been much lower.

We understand that groups such as trans and bisexual have been more recent additions to the LGBT acronym in the grand scheme of things so these groups do have a certain amount of catching up to do in relation to resources and representation but this shouldn’t come at the expense of other groups when there is still so much progress to be made, for everyone. People may feel that groups such as gay and lesbian, that have been part of the acronym for longer, already have the representation they need. But this isn’t true for young gay and lesbian people just finding the community who have not experienced this and instead will find a community that seems to priotitise just about everyone else. We have spoken to young gay/queer girls and women who feel put off from using the the word lesbian, feeling that it is old fashioned or not inclusive. We feel this is a direct result of LGBT community groups prioritising their resources to newer ‘trendier’ labels making lesbians feel they are not part of the in crowd.

We hope by drawing attention to this issue, LGBT community groups may look at their own resource allocation and posting habits to see if they could be better representing all the groups they aim to stand for. We are open to creating a dialog between us and any groups locally (or anywhere!) who want advice on how they can better support lesbians and gay women in their activism.