How Heteronormativity Erases Lesbian Identity

Someone once told me, “You don’t look like a lesbian.” The implication that I was supposed to fit a fantasy they already had about what lesbians are like. They are often portrayed as something sexual and performative, like something designed for straight consumption. The problem is that when lesbian identity is perceived through heterosexual expectations, it stops belonging to lesbians at all. For years, in the media and outside of it, lesbians have been treated as fantasies and fit into boxes created by heteronorms. This shapes how the public perceives them and their relationships. These portrayals suggest that our character is for the entertainment or arousal of straight men. When lesbians are treated as fantasies rather than people, it reinforces heteronormativity, resulting in lesbian erasure. 

The over-sexualization of lesbians is often passed off as harmless, but at its core, it is a form of homophobia. When lesbian relationships are understood primarily as sexual entertainment, they are stripped of their emotional and human depth. It suggests that lesbians exist to fulfill a heterosexual fantasy rather than to live in a real relationship. Marissa from HuffPost explains, “The immediate conflation of the gay community with sex is dangerous. It puts us on a primitive level beneath our heterosexual peers. It highlights the importance of our sex and negates the importance of us as people”. When lesbian identity is flattened into a sexual stereotype, it is dehumanizing. It says that these relationships are not love or partnership. They are simply visual material for others. Some may argue that sexual attraction is natural and that there is no harm in finding lesbian relationships desirable. However, the issue is not attraction itself, but the way lesbian intimacy is reduced to something performed for heterosexual consumption rather than recognized as a real relationship between two people. 

This dynamic plays out in life every day. The same article recalls a moment when the author and her wife were holding hands at a baseball game. Straight couples around them were openly affectionate, yet they had the attention. Marissa from HuffPost writes, “We were two women. We were not in a porn film he'd found online. We were not giggling and drunk at a bar. We were not topless on a poster board. We were a normal couple at a baseball game. But in his eyes we were sexualized." The reaction was objectification. Two women in love were not seen as partners, but as a fantasy and were perceived to be inappropriate. This treatment reinforces the idea that heterosexual relationships are the default, and the only form of intimacy, while lesbian relationships exist as accessories and their identities are not taken seriously. By sexualizing lesbians instead of recognizing them as people, society reinforces a perspective where heterosexuality remains dominant, and homosexuality is diminished or erased entirely. 

The oversexualization of lesbians isn’t just annoying or offensive, it has real consequences. Research shows that, “Objectification theory posits that sexual objectification can be internalized as self-objectification, which can increase women's opportunities for body shame as well as anxiety about their physical appearance and physical safety”. When lesbians constantly fall victim to this type of sexualization, it is dehumanizing. 

Heteronormativity shapes how lesbian identity is interpreted. People tend to understand lesbians through a straight lens, where relationships are assumed to have one “man” and one “woman.” This shows up in questions like, “So who’s the man?”. These kinds of statements reveal that the lesbian identity must mimic heterosexual roles. A writer from New University describes, “She experienced aggression simply because she did not meet the standard of appearing masculine as a lesbian." Many have the assumption that a lesbian must look a certain way to be believed. If a woman is feminine, her sexuality is questioned; if she is masculine, she may be mocked or seen as threatening. Either way, lesbian identity is being set by standards that were not made by lesbians, but by heterosexuals who should have no opinion on our sexuality. While it is true that some lesbians just naturally align with masculine or feminine expressions. The issue is not that these identities exist, but that they become treated as requirements. When only certain presentations are recognized as “real,” lesbian identity becomes something to prove. 

The oversexualization and stereotyping of lesbians doesn’t just distort how others see us, it actively erases us. When lesbian identity is only recognized if it fits a masculine-coded stereotype, anyone outside that is forced to defend their existence. Feminine lesbians learn that their sexuality is treated as a performance, something others feel entitled to question. Media rarely shows lesbians who are not either hyper-sexualized or visibly “butch,” so the full spectrum of lesbian identity becomes invisible or dismissed. And when you don’t match the stereotype, your sexuality becomes something you are expected to prove. The result is that many lesbians, especially feminine ones, struggle to form a stable sense of identity, because the world hands us templates instead of possibilities. If we are too feminine, we are not “real.” If we are not feminine enough, we are mocked or sexualized. The only perspective never prioritized is our own.