Susan Hawthorne

When colonisers conquer a land, their first reports back to the empire usually contain something along the lines of “the natives possess no culture”. This is a very fine way of excusing themselves for conquering and dispossessing other peoples. It also excuses their future actions of imposing their own culture and their own values on the colonised peoples for their own good. Eventually the colonised begin to believe the lies they are told by the colonisers and so take up the imperial culture at which they have to excel in order to get along in the world.

Lesbians, in this so-called post-colonial world, remain dispossessed of culture. Indeed, many still believe that lesbians have no culture. The dominant heterosexual discourse perpetuates the myth that there is no such thing as lesbian culture. The Victorian Civil and Administrative Appeals Court granted the LesFest 2004 an exemption allowing for the festival organisers to employ and advertise the festival only for female-born lesbians. However, the Australian WOMAN Network, a transsexual lobby group, complained that the term female –born is offensive.

So, every girl and woman who is born female is offensive! What would they say, I wonder, to the lesbian who is offended by the appropriation of her sex and her culture by men who pay thousands of dollars to have their genitals and hormones rearranged so that they can claim now to own the culture in which they have not grown up?

One is not born with culture. It is something that is acquired through experience, through growing up in the midst of the culture. There are good arguments to suggest that the cultures of men and women are quite distinct, while admitting to some overlaps where the sex of the person is irrelevant. And, of course, there are many cross-cultural interactions between the two groups. I am not suggesting any kind of sexual apartheid, but rather a recognition that for some women, the distinctive culture of women is important. And, further, that for many lesbians who have consciously created, developed and sustained a distinctive culture based on the cultural traditions of lesbians, the history of repression of lesbians including severe violence such as torture and murder meted out to lesbians, that culture is important and is best sustained through activities such as festivals that allow lesbians to meet and to share experiences (often painful) with one another.

It is strange to me that the integrity of a culture is easily recognised when it has to do with ethnicity. For example, if I were to want to change my culture, let’s say by wanting to identify as part of an Indigenous group, that group would be considered as acting quite reasonably if they suggested that this was an example of white appropriation of their culture.

This is precisely what is occurring among male-to-female transsexuals who after spending twenty to thirty years in the male culture, decide not only to change to the female sex, but also to claim an identity as a lesbian. But if I, as a lesbian, say that I am offended by this appropriation of my culture, nobody considers that my opinion is worth listening to.

Again, I am not suggesting that transsexuals should be excluded from participation in the mainstream society or that they should be discriminated against in the workplace, however I do ask that they respect the integrity of others and of the culture of other oppressed groups. There are many opportunities for transsexuals to participate in transsexual-only and in mixed groups. There are similar opportunities for lesbians to participate in mixed groups but few opportunities for lesbians to participate in female-born lesbian activities. And if this revocation is upheld, such opportunities will not exist. The result is a homogenising of cultural forms that is more likely to repress expression of a lesbian sensibility and create the preconditions for the loss of lesbian culture.

The colonisers, patriarchal men and women and in this case the WOMAN Network, cannot admit that there is such a thing as lesbian culture because it would put in question too much of the dominant heterosexual discourse and its institutions. It is a little like slavery. While slavery existed in the American south, it was possible to say that slaves were incapable of autonomous life and culture. When slavery is abolished, although much of the discourse remains, those same people are found to be quite capable of autonomous existence. Where lesbians exist openly, it is a challenge to the lie that women can have no autonomous existence from men; that the world of women must revolve around the centre that is male. Lesbians, like former slaves, pose a threat to the dominant culture. This is not to suggest all lesbians and all former slaves fully understand the political import of their situation, but symbolically lesbians are a threat to the heterosexual discourse and to patriarchal and heterosexual institutions.