**Content warning: This article includes references to homophobia, transphobia, sexual violence and misogyny
Today marks the first day of Lesbian Visibility Week 2024. ‘Visibility’ goes beyond merely ‘being seen’ or highlighting a problem, but also the ways in which something is complex or has not been addressed until now. Exploring how gender and queerness intersect with migration status, race and ethnicity is integral to our work at the Migrants’ Rights Network.
Discussions of lesbians in the UK immigration system often reduce them to monolith i.e. the label of ‘lesbian’ is used to describe an entire group of people with little analysis of how other aspects of their identities interact with oppressive systems or norms. In addition, any ‘visibility’ around lesbian migrants is often limited to those in the asylum system specifically in regard to asylum claims on the basis of sexuality. If we are interested in improving ‘visibility’, then we must consider the diversity of experience within the asylum system, what happens to lesbian migrants in the wider immigration system and for others in the diaspora, and challenge the idea of ‘visibility’ as an end goal, as opposed to abolition and liberation.
Ongoing erasure
Lesbian erasure is a form of lesbophobia. It’s important to say that by lesbian erasure, we mean the way in which lesbians are stereotyped into a uniform group, gaslit or redefined by cis-heteronormativity or lesbians with more social power. Lesbian erasure does not refer to the pitting lesbians against trans and non-binary people. Claiming lesbians are anti-trans is lesbophobic. In 2023, research found lesbians are the most likely to say they know a trans person (92%), and also the most likely to say they are “supportive” or “very supportive” of trans people (96%). That’s compared to 89% of LGBTQ+ people overall, and just 69% of non-LGBTQ+ people. Tackling erasure does not mean pitting one group against another. Attacking another marginalised group instead of understanding shared struggle in the face of oppressive systems will not achieve this.
Like all queer history, there is no one single culture or experience of ‘queerness’. Lesbian relationships and sexuality are documented across numerous cultures throughout history, from ancient Egypt, mediaeval Japan and colonial South America in many culturally-specific forms. However, in 2024, sexuality is generally seen through the Victorian colonial-era lens, and lesbians still experience stigma or misinformation around their sexuality.
“I would be bold enough to say that of every 1,000 women, taken as a whole, 999 have never even heard a whisper of these practices.” – Frederick Edwin Smith, Lord Chancellor and first Earl of Birkenhead, 1921
Much of Britain’s legislation targeting queer people focused on gay men including the Offences against the Person Act 1861 and Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, however the UK Parliament almost brought in a law specifically targeting lesbians or “gross indecency” between women in 1921. The reason this didn’t succeed was down to the idea that men assumed women weren’t aware that relationships between women existed. While this may be surprising to us now in 2024, it does draw attention to pervasive erasure that continues to persist.
Performing the ‘good gay’ and cis-heteronormativity
While it is already rare for lesbians to be platformed and addressed compared to gay men, where they are, they are often presented as White, feminine, cisgender and middle class, i.e. those who are more palatable to (White) cis-hetero society. Instead of challenging the racist, homophobic, transphobic and classist systems of oppression that exclude lesbians and other marginalised groups from society, then, this form of visibility aims to expand the “good citizen”, who is straight, cisgender, White, middle-class, to encompass the “good gay citizen”.
This means the queer people who conform to this idea are brought into the cis-hetero mainstream space as a form of performative allyship and surface-level representation. This allows harmful norms and systems to persist while hiding behind superficial representative politics. Pride Month and corporate rainbow-washing is a prime example of this. However, this is reliant on further stigmatising other queer populations, likely the majority of these communities in fact, from the expanded sphere of acceptability, which is largely demarcated along the lines of racialisation, migratisation, transness and class. It says “we’re just like you!” instead of questioning who is the ‘you’ and who is its implied ‘other’.
Image source: Brooks Kraft
As a result, lesbians who are marginalised in multiple ways are increasingly marginalised. Lesbians who are racialised or are migrants (particularly if they are or have been undocumented), are trans, working-class and/or who engage in ‘undesirable’/stigmatised occupations like sex work, are even more excluded in these contexts.
Lesbian migrants and conditional visibility
Lesbian migrants are offered conditional visibility, especially if they are an asylum seeker. In a xenophobic, racist and homophobic system, lesbian asylum seekers can become an object of sympathy for (White, straight) citizens when they are claiming asylum due to oppression and persecution in their country of origin. Otherwise homophobic institutions (like the UK Government) then use their accounts of oppression to leverage moral superiority over the rest of the world, typically the Global South, which reproduces a false and colonial outlook of Western progressiveness and Global South ‘backwardness’. This is homonationalism.
The same can occur from organisations who position themselves as pro-migrant but who end their support as soon as someone exits the asylum system. For a lesbian who gains refugee status, they can no longer be used as an example of the cruelty and homophobia within the punitive and anti-migrant asylum system. Furthermore, their experience is no longer seen as a refugee ‘issue’ if they experience lesbophobia within the rest of UK society – they are a ‘case’ that has been ‘closed’. The extensive siloing of migrants’ issues in the migration sector and the saviour approach of many can therefore harm lesbian migrants.
The latest Home Office asylum data on claims on the basis of sexual orientation (2022) show 2% of asylum claims in the UK (1,334 claims) included sexual orientation as part of the basis for the claim. Pakistani nationals accounted for the largest number in each of the last 6 years and accounted for 21% in 2022 (278 applications). In contrast, Pakistani nationals were the 10th largest nationality for overall asylum applications (and accounted for just 3% of overall asylum applications). Claims on the basis of sexuality account for a small proportion of total asylum applications. According to the data, there are exceptions to this, such as Uganda. The total number of Ugandan asylum applications were relatively small (1,258 applications from 2015 to 2022), yet 54% of the applications received from Ugandan nationals were applications with an “LGB element to the claim”. However, it is difficult to determine how many of these applications were lesbians as the Home Office gathers them into “LGB asylum applications.”
Like many queer people, lesbians can experience multiple forms of violence in their origin country. Research by Women for Refugee Women states these include rape, sexual abuse, female genital mutilation, forced prostitution, ‘honour’-based violence, forced marriage and domestic abuse. Their previous research found 78% of women they spoke with said they had fled gender-based violence and can experience further violence when crossing borders.
However, in any analysis we must ensure that we do not exclude the role of Western imperialism in creating both the conditions that queer people flee, nor the increased militarisation of oppressive immigration systems and borders. Homonationalist narratives and perception of the West as a queer utopia, while ignoring how Europe exported a lot of homophobia contributes to erasure of queer people, including lesbians.
Lesbians in the asylum system are subject to the Home Office’s culture of disbelief. For some, this can look like cases being dismissed because they were married to a man in their origin country. In addition, through our Network, we are aware that the Home Office looks at asylum seekers’ social media accounts in order to determine if they appear ‘gay enough’ or are photographed at LGBTQ+ events.
From visibility to liberation
Visibility is about meaningful representation and the dismantling of harmful (and cishet) norms within our systems, including the immigration system. However, visibility should be seen as a milestone towards liberation. We can see reclamation within the lesbian community as one important step, specifically the reclamation of the word ‘dyke’.
While the way people self-define including reclaiming slurs, which may be unintelligible to straight (and White) people, particularly when assessing asylum claims, this is an important act of shifting agency to marginalised people. However, ultimately as a campaigning charity moving towards abolition, true liberation will be a world not only where lesbians do not have to conform to cishet norms in oppressive systems, but ultimately the dismantling of these systems for good.
Further reading
Jasbir Puar, ‘Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times’ (2007); Cynthia Weber, ‘Queer International Relations’ (2016); Lisa Duggan, ‘The New Homonormativity’ (2002)