Erasure

Award-winning journalist Victoria Brownworth addresses a fundamental issue facing lesbians in the 21st century: a new and punishing form of invisibility that is both different from and more dangerous than what lesbians faced before Stonewall. The very concept of lesbianism is being erased by a damaging combination of liberal feminist dismissal and a "queer" community that continually adds different sexual minorities to the non-heterosexual LGBTQQIA but which has less and less patience with lesbianism (the only sexual orientation that excludes men). Brutal violence worldwide kills us. Lesbians are under constant pressure, if not outright threat to accept and embrace men/penises in their sexual lives, be it via compulsory heterosexuality or bisexuality, the "cotton ceiling," or "corrective" rape. Lesbian identity--butch, femme, androgynous--is increasingly endangered in a culture where female autonomy remains suspect. Erasure is a report from the front lines of the war on women.