What Does a ‘Genuine Lesbian' Look Like?

This chapter explores the ‘racialisation of sexuality’, whilst also acknowledging the intersections of sexuality and gender. The intersections of ‘race’ and sexuality are explored by using material from different projects: ethnographic research conducted in Manchester’s Gay Village and examples from grassroots activism gathered through my involvement as a volunteer for the Lesbian Immigration Support Group (LISG) in Manchester. Since the late 1970s, black feminists have stressed the importance of acknowledging that different social identities intersect. In their ‘Black Feminist Statement’, first published in 1978, the Combahee River Collective, a Boston-based, black, lesbian feminist group, argued:

The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.