The WDI USA Lesbian Caucus has submitted a statement to Reem Alsalem, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, in response to her call for input on violence against older women. The call did not mention lesbians even once; but the Lesbian Caucus statement below focused on lesbians and noted that the needs of lesbians are unique among women.
Women’s Declaration International (WDI) is a global, nonpartisan group of volunteer women dedicated to protecting women’s sex-based rights, including the rights of lesbians. Women’s Declaration International USA, Inc. (WDI USA) is its US chapter, and the WDI USA Lesbian Caucus is the team of lesbians that advises WDI USA on lesbian matters. WDI is based on the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, which has about 40,000 signatures globally.
Article 8 of the Declaration reaffirms the need for the elimination of violence against women, including lesbians, and Article 9 reaffirms the need for the protection of the rights of the child.
When we read the Special Rapporteur’s Call for Input on violence against older women, what immediately stands out to us is that, once again, the S.R.’s Call for Input makes no mention of lesbians. Our statement could describe at length what is unique about old lesbians and violence, beyond the issues that all old women are faced with; but that seems premature in light of the complete omission of lesbians from your otherwise detailed questions. So instead, our statement will focus on your Question 6: “Are there specific emerging or underreported forms of violence against older women . . . ?” as it relates to lesbians.
The Lesbian Bill Of Rights (the LBOR), which we authored and which has been adopted by seven radical feminist lesbian organizations in six countries, defines a lesbian as a human female homosexual; or, a woman or girl who is exclusively same-sex attracted. This definition, which used to be universally understood as accurate, has been consistent over many decades until recently, when the popularization of gender identity ideology introduced the notion that men could be lesbians if they claimed to be. Here are two of the consequences of this fashionable lie:
- Lesbians in many parts of the world, including much of the United States, are currently prevented from meeting in public as lesbians, whether to organize politically or to socialize. In many places, such meetings are required to be open to men who claim a woman identity. In 2019 in New York State, for instance, a group of lesbians were physically attacked and ejected from the city’s annual Dyke March, which had been started by lesbians decades before. As Roar Women NYC reports, the reasons underlying the ejection were that one lesbian was wearing a t-shirt with the sex-realist definition of lesbian – female homosexual; and the lesbian group held a labrys banner and signs honoring Stormé DeLarverie, the lesbian generally considered to have started the 1969 Stonewall uprising. They were removed from a lesbian march for being proudly lesbian. As of 2025 New York has a State Constitutional Amendment prohibiting discrimination based on “gender identity,” so now there could be serious legal consequences for excluding men from public lesbian meetings or events.
- Men who claim to be lesbians, demanding access to lesbian spaces, are demanding that they be considered as sexual partners with lesbians. Since this demand is accompanied by threats of violence and supported in many places by law and policy, the pressure on lesbians to comply against their will is significant. As a variant on the old lesbian-erasing trope “All she needs is a good f**k to straighten her out,” this incursion of men into all public lesbian spaces is consistent with rape culture.
- Lesbians who refuse to include men into their social, political, and sexual associations are framed as hateful TERF bigot Nazis who want all such men to die. The natural consequence of such framing has followed in slogans such as “Kill TERFs” and in violent physical attacks whenever sex-realist women (of whom many are lesbians) hold a rally. To be sure, lesbians have historically been subjected to male violence as “man-hating dykes,” but the slur “TERF” serves as “dyke” on steroids. But also, the slur “TERF” masks the anti-lesbian sentiment, and in fact obscures lesbians altogether.
Where gay men have historically been beaten, tortured, tried in court, hanged, and so forth, lesbians have been erased. The harmful scripts range from “They’re just good friends, what can two women do without a man anyway?” to “Lesbians are just women who haven’t yet met the right man/a real man” to “Lesbians are just heterosexual women who have been traumatized by men and can be cured!” to “Dykes are really (trans) men.” The harmful actions of erasure that have followed from these scripts of erasure have included involuntary commitment in psychiatric hospitals, electroshock “therapy,” psych “meds” that diminish one’s personality as well as libido, and chemical and surgical mutilation under the banner of “trans.” It seems that patriarchy wants to erase lesbians; and if that isn’t possible, to frame lesbianism as impossible and illegitimate for a woman; and if that isn’t possible, then to destroy lesbians’ sexual functioning in the name of medicine.
The WDI USA Lesbian Caucus has written an article titled “Why Are Lesbians Hated? (Part II) and What We Can Do About It” that addresses the root causes of patriarchal hatred of lesbians and attempts to erase us, and the perceived threat to patriarchy that lesbians pose even without trying. Simply put, lesbians are living illustrations that dependency and lack of agency (including sexual agency) are not innate to our sex; and those illustrations are understandably seen as undermining to the patriarchal mythology that male domination and female subordination are not only natural, but inevitable. And so lesbians must be made invisible:
- If it becomes widely known that women can thrive without making a deal for male protection in exchange for sex, then every ideological pillar of patriarchy is thrown into question.
- If it becomes widely known that lesbians can thrive in every way without a male head of household, then the social status of lesbians will increase, and being a lesbian could become an attractive option for all women, especially given the dangerous culture built on violent pornography that currently shapes heterosexual relations.
- So it’s in the interests of patriarchy everywhere to ensure that the truth remains hidden, and that lesbians are made invisible and silent.
The invisiblizing and erasure of lesbians has long been a successful patriarchal strategy that aggravates the discrimination and violence that lesbians in particular are faced with. If nobody is quite sure what a lesbian is, or whether real lesbians actually exist, then how can the rights of lesbians, or the deprivation of those rights, even be discussed? How can data specific to lesbians be collected when it is combined with data on all women, or with data that includes men? We respectfully request that the end to making lesbians invisible or illegitimate might start with the Special Rapporteur’s Calls for Input on violence against women.
WDI USA Lesbian Caucus
Lauren Levey, coordinator
Mary Ellen Kelleher
Katherine Kinney
Judy Schiavone
