Heterosexual Men Aren’t Lesbians

The University of Cork decided to invite queer theorist Susan Stryker as the keynote speaker at the 25th Lesbian Lives conference. This is an odd decision since Stryker is not a lesbian — if that word is to have any meaning at all — but rather a heterosexual male. As a heterosexual man, Stryker married a woman and fathered a child. In his own words, published in 1994:

It wasn’t too long ago that my ex and I were married, woman and man. That love had been genuine, and the grief over its loss real. I had always wanted intimacy with women more than intimacy with men, and that wanting had always felt queer to me. She needed it to appear straight. The shape of my flesh was a barrier that estranged me from my desire. Like a body without a mouth, I was starving in the midst of plenty. I would not let myself starve, even if what it took to open myself for a deep connectedness cut off the deepest connections I actually had. So I abandoned one life and built this new one.

In the same essay, Stryker wrote light-heartedly about “pioneering on a reverse frontier: venturing into the heart of civilization itself to reclaim biological reproduction from heterosexism and free it for our own uses.” But Stryker hasn’t “reclaimed biological reproduction from heterosexism.” No matter how he now identifies or what medical processes he may have undergone, Stryker remains a male who is sexually attracted to females. That’s as heterosexual as it gets.

It’s no wonder that actual lesbians are upset about this appropriation of womanhood, and undermining of same-sex attraction. Eva Kurilova, a lesbian feminist, complained to Reduxx that “in queer and woke spaces, lesbians are no longer allowed to describe ourselves as same-sex attracted, as this is not seen as inclusive. . . . Instead, we have to be open to biological males in our spaces, on our dating apps, and in our sex lives.”

“He is not and can never be a woman who wants and seeks intimacy with other women,” Kurilova said. Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan, an early pioneer of gay rights, said of Stryker’s invitation: “This is where we are. The abolition of homosexuality as a core left tenet.”