The Fetishization of Queer Women

Gurleen Arora and Winnie Chopra, who run Thegaygazebombay, an initiative to share queer stories.

Queer (adj) is an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender.

-“Queers Read This,” Queer Nation, 1990

If you do a quick google search on “The most watched categories of porn,” you’ll come across multiple curated lists. While the order might slightly defer, I guarantee “lesbian” will be amongst the top 5 categories. Infact, an article published in 2019 in Men’s Health on “The 10 Most Popular Porn Categories of the Last 10 Years,” placed “lesbian” on the top of the list.

However, it should come as no surprise that majority of the audience viewing “lesbian” porn aren’t actually queer women.

As someone that has always been attracted to beauty, regardless of sex or gender, I’ve had the privilege of sharing intimate encounters with both men and women. I never officially “came out” (still haven’t) but most of the people close to me are aware of my sexuality, including my husband.

Before I got married, I noticed a common pattern of reactions from most men, whenever my sexuality came up. “That’s hot, can I watch?” or “Can I join you next time?” were questions that often came up, as if my sexuality was for their pleasure. Now that I am married to a man, many people assume my attraction to women was just a phase. Well, that’s not how it works.

“Most cishet men don’t take our relationship seriously because our relationships have not been legitimized in a society where only heterosexual relationships are considered valid,” says Gurleen Arora and her partner, Winnie Chopra, when asked about their experience with the fetishization of their relationship. “Our sexuality is not accepted; we are instead seen as objects that are simply putting on a show for the enjoyment of those watching (especially straight men).” Arora who is a gender queer artist, and Chopra, an out and proud veteran lesbian and co founder of The Gay Gaze, experience the struggles of having to validate their relationship, regularly.

The truth is, society has normalised romantic female relationships being viewed as something inherently erotic. “The normative idea of queer women is one which is constructed to be attractive to men,” writes Denisha Kiloh in her blog “Hyper-sexualising queer women is a social injustice – it’s time to change the narrative” published in Engender.

So what feeds this portrayal?

According to Arora and Chopra, the way we’ve been raised could be a major contribution–“We have all mostly grown up in a very heteronormative world and all the relationships around us as kids have always been between a man and a woman.” The lack of representation of queer relationships actively inhibits our communities from learning more about them. Plus, the way we constantly portray women and queer relationships doesn’t help either.

“The media has been a major culprit of socialising these attitudes into society by regurgitating a narrative of lesbianism which is unrealistic and unrepresentative,” wrote Killoh. Like porn, queer women and their relationships are often represented in a hyper sexualised way, even in film and the media.

It’s time we recognize that we can do better.

“The most necessary step to improvement is to prioritize queer voices in their own storytelling. ” says Emily Jacobson, in her discussion on fetishization of queer women in film, published in FilmDaze in 2020.

Both Arora and Chopra share similar views, “ We need more narratives around healthy sex lives of queer bodies. It’s really important. Listening to and telling stories of queer women and understanding their struggles and their joys is very important. To simply make our bodies about our breasts and our vaginas is not acceptable.”

The truth is, queer women exist, have existed since the beginning of our entire species, and are here to stay. We come in all shapes and sizes and even if we don’t fit any stereotype, we are still here, and queer.

See us, hear us, feel us. Understand us.

And like Arora and Chopra rightly point out, “There’s more to our lives than what we do in our bedrooms.”