I think that most queer women are sexualised day after day. I think that, for a lot of us, a wolf whistle as we hold hands in the street slips under the radar – after all, at least we’re still safe. But if these things continue to slip by, deemed to be “non-violent” actions, their violence against us as lesbians and against our queer sisters only increases.

If we don’t fight our sexualisation, then our humanity becomes easier to strip away. You could even say the sexualisation of queer women is the Trojan horse of homophobia.

I’ve talked about a recent incident of online sexual harassment already on this account, but I’ll repeat the details. It was International Lesbian Day and I posted a quick tweet about it with some photos. Somehow it blew up. The issue was that it was in a hashtag, somewhere easy for people outside of our gay internet bubble to access.

By the end of the day I’d had countless replies by men, fueled by homophobia. These consisted of general “sinner” comments (somehow easier to brush off – less personal), but also speculation about our sex lives, as well as corrective rape threats. I haven’t been on that twitter account since. It was an account I had for professional reasons – I am being blocked from possible career advancement because of some men’s sense of entitlement to my lesbian sexuality.

This campaign is important to so many of us in so many different ways. For me and all of us who have faced sexualisation as queer women to get through our experiences, we have to stand together, share them, and find ways to tackle them. The scariest part of harassment is being alone – but we are not alone. 👩‍❤️‍👩