Harvard Lesbians Seek Community

For most women at Harvard, Friday nights are a predictable affair. Around the Square, women clad in flashy jewelry and short dresses head to final clubs or room parties to dance with men.

But last month, a few Harvard women left this Friday night scene and boarded a bus to Wellesley, and a world where women replaced their dresses with lingerie, leather, and studs. One daring woman left her top bare other than rainbow suspenders covering her nipples, while another dressed as a condom.

The school’s annual Dyke Ball, one of the largest gatherings of lesbian college students in the Boston area, is a striking example of Wellesley’s vibrant lesbian culture.

But at Harvard, lesbian events as high profile as Dyke Ball are unimaginable. The school’s queer female community—often overshadowed by a more recognizable gay male population—is far less visible and internally divided between athletes, activists, and a more alternative crowd.

And while some are pushing for the community to become more prominent and cohesive, internal rifts have so far hindered such efforts to bring Harvard’s queer women together.

‘A STEREOTYPICAL IMAGE’

The college admissions office often touts the school’s diversity, showcased by a wide array of ethnic organizations, religious communities, and groups such as the Harvard College Queer Students and Allies (QSA), an umbrella group for students of different sexualities and gender identities.

But queer women seem to stay under the radar. Like most other campus communities, they have an organization, Girlspot, which functions as an exclusively social group for queer women.

Despite this, multiple freshmen claimed they had not met or did not know a single lesbian at Harvard, while all of them said they knew gay men.

Some queer women were surprised by this assessment, since they make no effort to hide their sexual orientations.

Blessing T. Oyeniyi ’10, the chair of Girlspot, jokes that when she introduces herself she says, “Hi, I’m a lesbian. My name’s Blessing.”

And Emily A. Owens ’09 freely answered questions about the lesbian community in the packed Darwin’s café on Cambridge Street.

According to Michelle C. Kellaway ’10, students on campus don’t realize when a woman is gay, so the community remains unrecognized.

“People are looking for us to be quite visible in some recognizable way,” Kellaway says. “Most people have a stereotypical image of what gay women look like and this doesn’t hold for our community here at all.”

Oyeniyi eschews the butch lesbian stereotype, instead wearing formfitting, feminine clothing and playing with her long hair as she talks. Even the Girlspot Web site defies societal expectations with a neon pink background.

Unless one dresses to match the butch masculine stereotype, Oyeniyi says, it is difficult to distinguish queer women from straight ones.

‘HIPPIE VEGETARIAN’

Through Girlspot, Oyeniyi organizes parties and social events where queer women can bridge the gaps that seem to divide them.

She splits the community into three camps: the politically active, the athletes, and the “more hippie Co-op vegetarian lesbians.”

Rower Elizabeth C. Elrod ’11 agrees with this characterization, distinguishing the “super liberal” crowd from the athletes and the Co-op women.

And although some women cross these divisions (for example, Rosenberg is chair of the Trans Task Force, a member of the Dudley Co-op, and a former varsity fencer), many say there is little interaction between the groups.

“I find it quite rare when I see an athlete come over to my sector of the world,” Kellaway says. Kellaway counts herself among the politically active and is former co-chair of the QSA.

Multiple women say the only events that bring the entire community together are showings of The L Word, a drama on Showtime about a group of lesbian women. When new episodes were shown on Sunday nights, Girlspot would host a screening in the basement of the Women’s Center.

Kellaway says she sees more queer women together at The L Word showings than at any other gathering on campus.

“Why would I go even though I think the show is atrocious? It’s because it’s so much fun to watch in a big group of people,” Kellaway says.

The show’s final episode aired last month. And even though the divided community may no longer come together to watch The L Word, the group is intertwined through personal connections—friendships, hook-ups, and ex-girlfriends, for better or for worse.

‘NINE TIMES OUT OF 10’

Indeed, these divisions largely dissolve when it comes to romance because the lesbian community is too small for people to date exclusively athletes or liberals. Many queer women say they all know each other.

Rosenberg says she recalls her friend going on a date with someone last year and saying, “God, it has to work out, because she’s the only queer female athlete left.”

Many feel frustrated and limited with the small dating pool on campus.

“Think about it: if I see a woman on the street, nine times out of 10 she’s going to be straight,” Oyeniyi says, joking that sometimes she has to “turn” straight women.

But the queer women’s social scene is not unified either. A few women regularly take advantage of the Boston nightlife, going to lesbian nightclubs and queer parties at nearby colleges.

Kellaway went to queer parties off campus nearly every weekend during her freshman and sophomore years, and says she feels uncomfortable at Harvard room parties she has been attending this year.

But Elrod only went to a lesbian bar in Boston for the first time this year.

Usually, she spends weekend nights with her heterosexual friends, going out to final clubs and dancing.

“I feel like there’s a lot of lesbians who avoid final clubs,” she says. “If it’s Saturday night, I go out and embrace what’s going on.”

Owens says she devotes most of her time to the black community, instead of Girlspot parties, lesbian bars, or final clubs, and was able to find her own support network of queer women of color.

‘REALLY MALE AND REALLY WHITE’

Owens emphasizes another dividing factor within the queer female community and the gay community in general: race.

Rosenberg also focuses on the difficulties of being a queer woman of color. Although she is white, Rosenberg talked at length about how religious and ethnic identities intersect with the queer community.

Owens says race was a large part of why she never became involved with the QSA, then known as the Harvard-Radcliffe Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance.

“I perceived the BGLTSA as a really white organization,” Owens says. “And really male, but mostly really white.”

Owens responded to the perceived lack of racial diversity by co-founding BlackOut—a confidential group for queer black students.

The QSA changed its name early last month from BGLTSA. When the name change was proposed over the BGLTSA-open e-mail list in February, the list exploded with passionate debate about the use of the word “queer.”

As the thread grew to over 50 e-mails, some vaguely accused the organization of being focused on gay men.

“I don’t perceive it as particularly inclusive of, say, women, or trans people, or even those who identify as queer,” Rosenberg wrote in an e-mail to the list in February.

Current co-chairs Marco Chan ’11 and Rogelio J. Mercado, Jr. ’10 say the name change was intended to make the organization more inclusive.

Owens acknowledges that the QSA has been very gender-integrated, and Kellaway says that when she was cochair of the organization, the board had representatives from every race.

“I wouldn’t say that there are more gay white men in the BGLTSA,” Kellaway says. “I would say their voices are heard more often.”

Oyeniyi says the QSA extended an offer for Girlspot to become part of the QSA umbrella, but she declined, wanting to stay focused on queer women.

Unlike the QSA, which hosts panels and organizes political rallies in addition to throwing parties, Girlspot is exclusively social.

REPAIRING THE RIFTS

Without The L Word, Girlspot is revamping its strategy for unifying the community. The organization is becoming more structured and more official.

Oyeniyi expanded the board to help her with organizing events and finally opened a Girlspot bank account.

Oyeniyi plans to bring Harvard’s lesbians together by throwing more parties and hosting dinners.

But with such deep rifts in the community, it remains to be seen if Harvard could ever host an event to rival Dyke Ball.

—Staff writer Danielle J. Kolin can be reached at dkolin@fas.harvard.edu.