Sexual harassment exists within lesbian spaces as well

Writing for The Advocate, queer writer-director Chanelle Tyson made the point that sexual harassment isn’t limited to straight women. In the months since the Harvey Weinstein allegations and the subsequent tearing down of the most famous of patriarchies – Hollywood – Tyson said she felt an odd sense of relief for being gay.

“Not that one's sexuality makes anyone immune to the advances, harassment, abuse, etc., of men,” she wrote, “but as someone who exclusively dates women, I figured queerness came with some protection. As I'm fully immersed in the LGBTQ+ community, there is a distinct lack of straight men in my life, and since the vast majority of those who have been accused of sexual misconduct have been straight men, I was left with a misguided sense of security.”

She went on to describe an uncomfortable incident at a lesbian nightclub in West Hollywood where a friend of hers was groped and stalked by an aggressively drunk woman. She said at the time she shrugged it off as amusing and a mild annoyance, but in hindsight, she questions if whether this woman had been a man she would have thought differently.

Woman are under the misguided idea that only men can be harassers, she wrote, and it’s a dangerous assumption to make.

She wrote of another incident, this time one that happened to her personally. Like her friend, she encountered another aggressively drunk woman at a Halloween party, only this one followed her into the bathroom and refused to take no for answer. While she managed to escape, she realised no one stopped to help her, no one saw it as a problem.

“I was stunned and helpless in the moment,” she wrote. “I honestly felt disgusting, being touched so crassly in such an intimate way by a woman who I neither knew nor liked. That sort of violation is hard to shake, and my skin still crawls, two weeks later.

Woman-on-woman harassment should be seen as legitimate, she surmised. Unfortunately, it happens within the queer community and shrugging it off or ignoring it is dangerous.

“Harassment is harassment, no matter the identity of the perpetrator or the victim.”

Tim Gibson - myGwork

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