What if women can question, resist, and even leave heterosexuality?

In this episode of I Wish I Was a Lesbian, Angela Wild sits down with Lauren Levey-longtime radical feminist activist, veteran of the Women’s Liberation Movement, former WDI USA board member, founder of the Lesbian Bill of Rights International, and lifelong advocate for lesbian visibility and women’s liberation.

Share

Subscribe now

ANGELA: What if I told you heterosexuality was not innate? What if I told you sexual orientation is not immutable but can change? What if I told you women can opt out of heterosexuality and choose to be lesbians? If any of this was possible, what would you choose? Hello, I’m Angela Wild, and this is I Wish I Was A Lesbian, a channel where we explore women’s lives from a lesbian feminist perspective.

This channel is held by myself alongside Michelle Kerwin and Tabatha Spinster. And in this place, we give a platform to women who have left heterosexuality and believe an alternative lesbian life is possible. Women whose lesbianism is a conscious decision, is influenced by their feminism, or who view their lifelong lesbianism from the political lens of feminism.

We do not believe that leaving men means having to give up on relationship intimacy or sex. In fact, we believe that in a world where men teach each other how to rape us and get away with it, women choosing women as romantic and sexual partners may well be the most efficient way towards global women’s liberation as well as personal fulfilment.

So this channel challenges biological essentialist notions of sexuality and prompts women to question why they think of themselves as heterosexual and whether they wish to remain so. So if you’re a woman with an interest in feminism, if you want to further your understanding of the mechanisms of women’s oppression, if you want to hear conversation about compulsory heterosexuality and how to leave it, this channel is for you.

In the next few sessions, I will be interviewing some of the contributors to the book I Wish I Was A Lesbian: Women’s Lives Beyond Heterosexuality, which is here, which is released in May 2026 at Spinifex Press. And you will find those interviews on YouTube, Spotify and Substack under the name I Wish I Was A Lesbian.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe. So for today’s episode, I am delighted to welcome Lauren Levy. Lauren is, in her own words, “A veteran of the second wave of the women’s liberation movement.” She’s a former WDI USA board member where she has founded and coordinated the lesbian caucus, and she’s also created the Lesbian Bill of Rights International, an international network of radical feminist lesbian organisations.

Welcome, Lauren

LAUREN: Thanks, Angela. I’m delighted to be here.

ANGELA: And so I am that you are, because I was very excited to be able to work with you. So first I gave a very short introduction. I would like you to introduce yourself to the audience. Who are you? What are you doing?

What would you like the audience to know about you a little bit beyond what I’ve said?

LAUREN: Well, let me give you a really thumbnail biography. It’s a little different from what you just read. Supplements it. I was born in 1947 in Brooklyn, New York, and I did most of my growing up in a suburb of the city of New York City during the 1950s.

I’ve been a women’s liberationist since at least 1965, and I suspected I might be a lesbian even before that. I worked for Abortion On Demand during the late 1960s, and in the 1970s I was one of the first tenure-tracked women faculty hired by Dartmouth College. And at one point I chaired its women’s caucus, whose goal was to make sure that women undergraduates could succeed at Dartmouth.

I also participated in some feminist consciousness-raising groups during that time; I got smarter. In the 1980s, I was one of the founders of the Sirens Women’s Motorcycle Club in New York City, which created the tradition of dykes on bikes, leading the annual New York City gay and lesbian Pride March.

In the 1990s, I was on the board of directors of a large LGB community centre in White Plains, New York, which is where I first became involved in the fight to exclude trans, pedophiles, and sadomasochists from the LGB. At that time, I was also operating a lesbian-only guesthouse in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which is on Cape Cod.

From 2019, I think it was 2019, until March of 2026, I served on first the steering committee and later on the board of WDI’s US chapter. So really, since 2019, when at the very beginning, whenever it started, right after the declaration was written. During that time, I created its lesbian caucus, as you mentioned.

And presently I sometimes write stuff for my Substack, and I’ll be holding online international consciousness-raising groups starting in a couple of weeks. Different groups will be held at different times to accommodate different time zones. And people can message me on Facebook as Lauren Levy or on X as @LaurenFLevy if you think you’d like to participate in one of my groups.

ANGELA: That sounds very exciting. Can I join?

LAUREN: Absolutely.

ANGELA: Well, I’m really glad I asked, because what a feminist CV and a lesbian CV you have. Like, wow. Bikes on Dykes, I didn’t know that you were part of that. That’s really amazing. Great. So you mentioned a few things that I wanted to get back to. I’m very interested into listen to women’s background.

It really fascinates me to see how the culture we grew up in can help or hinder our path to lesbianism. So you mentioned you were growing up in the ‘50s, so how was it, as a child, as a teenager? How was that culture? How was that world in general?

LAUREN: So the 1950s was a terrible time to be a little girl.

In fact, it may have been worse to be straight than to be a little lesbian. I suspected when I was a kid that I might be a lesbian, even though I didn’t know the word yet. But as a child, I felt that I didn’t have enough data really to be certain. 1950s cultural values were remarkably uniform throughout every demographic in the US.

Women had been systematically driven out of most of the decent jobs that they’d had, they had during World War II, and most women either had low-wage jobs that men didn’t want, or else they were financially dependent on a male head of household. Nearly universal facts of American life in the 1950s, as promoted by virtually all politicians, religious leaders, and media included these, and it’s a long list.

Abortion was illegal. Virginity ideology for girls, right, for girls only, was by far the norm. The script was that no man would want to marry you if you had not been absolutely chaste, and then how would you survive financially and socially if you couldn’t marry? Birth control devices were not generally made available to single women.

While there was an economic and cultural imperative to marry, marriage laws were truly draconian for women, but most of you only found out what the terms were, marriage terms were, right, after you were married, and oh, say, you applied for a credit card or had objections to being raped or beaten up or something like that.

And especially when you wanted a divorce. Discrimination against women in employment was generally considered reasonable and reality-based. Lesbians were criminals, but also lesbians didn’t really exist. That’s how... That’s really emblematic of how 1950s culture was in many areas. It’s a bunch of lies and a bunch of contradictions, and you knew better than to ask repeatedly.

I knew it at the time. I knew it was a bunch of lies, but what I didn’t know was what was actually true. It wasn’t just sexism and homophobia that struck me as unjust. There was also terrible racism. We were taught at school that Lincoln had freed the slaves, and now there was racial justice except in those backwards southern states that still had segregation laws.

But here in New York, we were told we had racial equality, which anyone with eyes could see was a lie. If you were a little girl, pretty much everything you were taught about how the culture worked was a romanticised lie, so you were intentionally not given the tools you needed to deal with the cultural realities that forcibly blocked nearly every path to liberty and autonomy.

I didn’t quite understand all of that in those terms, but I understood that I was being lied to all the time about how pretty and pastel the world was supposed to be, and it made me very angry. I still really hate the 1950s colour palette. In 1959, well, let me just finish out the 1950s. I might as well.

In 1959, I was 12 years old, which was great ‘cause I was finally old enough to gain access, to be allowed access to the adult sections of my suburban public library. I didn’t even know the term lesbian yet, but I learned it the day that I researched homosexual in the card catalogue. The card catalogue showed exactly four sections in four different books that referenced lesbians, which was pretty good for 1959 in the suburbs.

Fortunately, there was an open stack system. I knew that I must not leave a paper trail of what I was researching, so I quickly read all four sections of all four books in the open stacks standing right there. And then I ran over to the train station, and I took a train to Grand Central Station, and from there I took the subway to Greenwich Village because I had just learned from a book that they had lesbians in the Village.

So I spent the whole afternoon walking all over the Village, but I failed to find even one lesbian. This was no doubt because the only photographs of lesbians that I’d seen at the library were from Paris in the 1920s. In 1959, Romaine Brooks herself may even have been living in the village, but she definitely would not have looked anything like those old photos.

Anyway, it’s probably lucky that I didn’t recognise any lesbian that day. I imagine I would have approached her and scared her, considering that lesbianism was a crime, and to make it even worse, I was only 12. I was a tomboy, and that was acceptable until you became a teenager.

It’s almost as though patriarchy at that time was so powerful and so arrogant. It’s about the absolute power that it could afford to let little girls have quite a lot of liberty because it would coerce compliance right at puberty, and it would cut it all off.

But I understood that anything I thought or did that didn’t conform to being a future happy housewife needed to be kept secret. And I also read a lot, and some of what I read, from different times in history and about different places in the world, gave me some hope that maybe there could be a different reality that I just hadn’t discovered yet.

Lesbians in the 1950s were said, on the one hand, not to really exist. But also lesbians would be punished if they failed to cooperate in their own erasure. There, there was a lesbian couple, both of whom taught in my junior high school, and everybody joked that they were lesbians, but I don’t think anybody really believed that they really were lesbians because lesbians didn’t exist.

But I’m sure they were lesbians, in retrospect. They were invisible in plain sight, and what they were doing was theoretically punishable by law and also by loss of their teaching careers. And that, all of that, made me worry about my own future, and the fact that I was worried made me really angry.

ANGELA: It’s fascinating. First of all, your dedication to finding out and travelling to find out, but also what you describe is what we call lesbian erasure, isn’t it? Just- the first discrimination and the first oppression against us is that we are invisible. We do not exist; therefore we cannot influence others because if that doesn’t exist, then nobody can see.

The first lesbian I’ve ever met, I was 25, and I’m younger than you. And, yeah in a progressive and liberal environment, it’s, really-

LAUREN: Outrageous ...

ANGELA: Outrageous, yes. Very strange. So we’re gonna skip the next question ‘cause you already answered it, which was, how did the cultural norm of the ‘50s, and you called them oppressive, shape your early understanding of yourself? And that word, I think that was it. But can you describe, going forward, your experience coming of age during, well, what the, what was the reaction to the ‘50s during the social upheaval of the ‘60s? How was this revolutionary counterculture? I’ve always been quite fascinated by it, but, missed it by a few years. How did it feel? How did it influence the way you were living in those times? What did you do? What were you doing in the ‘60s?

LAUREN: Well, so it felt to me as though the whole culture changed almost overnight. In 1965, when I graduated from high school, That’s when it changed. 1950s culture was all that I’d known from early childhood through high school. It was all I... it was my norm, right? In the fall of 1965, it was suddenly culturally the 1960s in my part of the world, and suddenly I felt as though I had found my people. They were all around my age, they were questioning everything, and they were demanding an end to the lies and the platitudes and the rigidity and all the gross injustices. It felt as though a revolution in favour of justice was possible. I think it happened at exactly that time because the leading edge of the baby boomers, which included me, had just turned 18. We were suddenly adults under the law, and we had suddenly found each other, and we were very pissed about the 1950s. I remember a bunch of students stoning a 1955 Cadillac at Williams College. It wasn’t our entire generation that felt that the way that I did, but it was a critical mass. We just never again wanted to see the racism or the sexism or the classism or any of those rigid rules ever again. So in 1965, remember lesbianism was criminalized, abortion was illegal in every state, and birth control was just barely starting to be available to unmarried women if you knew where to ask. But you could feel that change was at hand, and that feeling was thrilling. Something was gonna break, and we didn’t know exactly what, but we were all for the break The Freedom Riders had just severely damaged the racial segregation laws in the South, and some of those brave young Freedom Riders putting their lives on the line i- for liberty and justice a- and in some cases losing their lives, some of those people were women.

Women’s liberation was in the air.

ANGELA: It’s really great to hear you speak about this. And you can really feel the generation changing. I... When you were talking, I was like, when we speak nowadays to younger women, so I’m Gen X I got called a boomer. I got called a boomer a couple of weeks ago as an insult.

And when I hear, and obviously I know that story because that’s my parents’ generation story. May ‘68 happened in France as well. A similar movement, social movement happened in many countries. And I’m like, why though? Because, your generation fought for a lot of good, for- against a lot of, a lot of bad. And I can only understand it as some form of obviously ageism, but also misogyny because there’s very much less critique of boomers when these boomers are men, I feel. And somehow when we say something, that was generated in your early years, it’s seen as a bad thing, and it’s uncomprehensible for me because, so much was born in this time.

You mentioned your education. Can you tell me a little bit about it? You said you were in a tiny college. What did you do? Yeah. Again, what did you do and how was that? What was it like? You also, you said you met Andrea Dworkin, so I’m a little bit curious.

LAUREN: I can talk about all of that. I chose to attend a tiny women’s college in Bennington, Vermont because it was said to be far left politically, and it was rumoured that a lot of the students were lesbians. I literally chose a college because it was reputed to be full of lesbians, and my parents fortunately had no idea.

For the record, I found that in fact, most of the undergraduate women at Bennington College in 1965 at least had, oh, a lesbian streak, and it was glorious. And yes, Andrea Dworkin was just one class ahead of me. Bennington only had 300 and something undergraduates at that time, and they were all women except for about four men in the dance and theater departments.

So we all knew each other and one day Andrea invited me and a handful of other women to her dorm room to hear her read something she’d just written. It was, What she read was a deconstruction of several fairytales, and it blasted men and it blasted male heroes. I had never heard anything like that.

It struck me as iconoclastic and accurate and also hilarious. It was such a relief to hear it, a- and it was beautifully laid out, of course, and it kind of blew my mind. Andrea was looking for feedback from us, and, unfortunately, I was kind of speechless in the moment because I needed to process what she had done.

Now nine years later in 1974, she incorporated a version of what she read to us into her first radical feminist book called Woman Hating

ANGELA: That’s yeah, that’s fascinating. Would you say this is one of the moment that maybe shaped your path towards radical feminism?

LAUREN: It was one moment, but there, there were other similar... 1965, I keep coming back to 1965 as being a magical year. In 1965, abortion was a crime in Vermont, and inevitably there was a Bennington student who needed an abortion. She couldn’t go to her parents because they, she was sure that they would pull her out of school, and she wasn’t sure that they’d let her have an abortion in any case.

And someone learned that there was an OBGYN, a young woman, in a nearby town who would perform a medically safe but illegal abortion for $1,200. That’s $1,200 in 1969 money, so it’s about $10,000 today Yes. We didn’t even think it was overpriced. After all, the young doctor was risking not only her medical career, but her liberty.

So a hat was passed at every meal, and the $1,200 was successfully collected, and the student had an abortion, and she stayed in school. That series of events impressed me profoundly. Collective action against an unjust law had not only preserved a young woman’s agency, but it was a fantastic illustration that sisterhood is powerful.

After that, there was really no turning back for me. The die was cast.

ANGELA: With the later- latest development in the US, how far or how close are you to that model nowadays?

LAUREN: Yeah. The a number of states, as well as, of course, the Trump administration are rolling back. They’re taking aim at women’s rights.

We’re in the line of fire. And maybe you’ve read about it just today. The Supreme Court has temporarily allowed an abortion drug to be to be sold online after it had been prevented from being sold online just a couple of days ago. And that’s an ongoing battle, es- especially in red states, but the federal government is going after abortion rights.

And at the same time I can just see that the anti-discrimination laws are being weakened and enforcement is being weakened of those rights. So I’m extremely concerned that we’re going back to not just the 1950s, but to, to a place where you can’t say ... Well, you can’t say lesbian anymore ‘cause it

For different reasons now. But you also can’t say woman, and that’s substantially worse, of course, than the 1950s. Yes of course, I’m concerned about that.

ANGELA: There’s also quite a lot on racism where Black activists are saying that the word Black is being censored from a lot of document, and saying that how can you fight discrimination if you can’t

And same with women, you can’t name what the discrimination is based on because supposedly we’re over it now. You can see a lot of similarities. It is very worrying. Jumping back to you as a lesbian you did mention when you ... Well, you didn’t really become a lesbian. You felt you were quite early, you were a lesbian I

LAUREN: suspected.

Yeah I suspected I was a lesbian.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

ANGELA: Yes. My question really is about how you understand the nature of sexual orientation. For you, is it something that’s innate, that’s socially constructed? What are your views on, on, on that debate?

LAUREN: I could elaborate a little bit on, on my own development- Yeah

A- as a lesbian. It’s complicated. And in fact, in preparation for talking to you today I gave it some thought because I don’t know that I ever sort of sat down and mapped it out. But here’s what I’ve got So i- in 1965 again I was finally free as a legal adult, and I was in a women-only environment where lesbianism was almost sort of admired.

A- and what I wanted was to break all the rules, and I wanted to try everything. So I didn’t want to be a lesbian at first. I- what I wanted was to transcend every limit that society put on me as a woman because I wanted my agency. I wanted all my options. So I had some wonderful friends at college, and I had sexual adventures with several, and they were all good experiences.

There were no bad experiences, and some of those experiences were magical. And they tended to be, those relationships tended to be egalitarian, and they tended to be authentic. My friends were amazing. The liberty and the dignity that we had at a women’s college was amazing, and it was 1965, as I keep saying.

I also conducted some sexual experiments with men because I wanted to experience everything. In fact, I felt as though I couldn’t really know if I was a lesbian without experiencing men. I know that sounds weird in 2026, but that’s as close as I can come to what I was thinking at the time.

A- and then over the next few years, I think three things happened simultaneously. One was that I just simply stopped being attracted to any men at all. It just happened. I think that was because my sexual experiences with them were all disappointing. It was kind of like I, I had put myself through, without meaning to, some kind of aversion therapy.

I I’d start off being attracted, but then every single man made some kind of physical power move, like a move to dominate me physically, every single one. And every time that happened, it instantly ruined any sexual magic for me. So the experiences were disappointing, and and also there was an undercurrent of danger, not only to my physical safety but to my personal agency, which was so crucially important to me as a refugee from the 1950s A second thing that happened at the same time was that my radical feminism got better informed and smarter.

I became increasingly uncomfortable with the suspicion that sex with men might be incompatible with my developing radical feminist analysis. Sex with men was looking like a betrayal of political solidarity with women. And thirdly, by the 1970s, the women’s liberation movement was having fantastic successes in changing the law and the culture, and it was clearly led by lesbians, despite Betty Friedan’s discomfort with the lavender menace that lasted for about two minutes.

They were turning patriarchy on its ear, the lesbians were, and they were doing it fast, and I just, I wanted to stand clearly with those lesbians. So I simply made a decision. I just decided to stop doing men. So putting it all together, my experiences of disappointment with men and experiences of occasional magic with women, and my developing radical feminist analysis and my admiration for those political lesbians leading the movement, I’d say that there were both involuntary and voluntary factors that led to my becoming a lesbian by 1975.

You asked how I understand sexual orientation, whether it’s innate or socially constructed. At the time, we all understood at the time meaning late ‘60s, early ‘70s the second wave. We understood that any woman could become a lesbian because we’d seen it happen.

It wasn’t dogma. We had just... We had witnessed it. We were all in consciousness-raising groups, and we had all seen previously straight participants in those groups fall in love with another woman possibly another woman in the consciousness-raising group, a- and leave their husbands. It was common, and it was normal.

So when Alex Dobkin sang Any Woman Can Be a Lesbian, it reflected our collective understanding of our lived reality. And there was something else at work, too. We had been lied to throughout our 1950s childhoods about what was supposedly innate and natural for women, so we deliberately made it a part of our developing new culture to assume in the first instance that nothing is innate or natural, that there are no natural limits on who we could be or what we could do because that seemed like the best way to test for what our limits really are and to destroy all those suffocating lies that steal women’s agency and women’s options.

ANGELA: That, that to me seems very rational and healthy given, yeah, given the level of biological essentialist lies throughout patriarchy that we, we should- By default question anything that we say we are born to be. And I’m glad you raised that. But I wanted to show you this when you were talking, I was showing a mug.

Because I really also believe that, and I know how controversial some women find it. The idea of the book was to challenge these ideas that we are born a certain way especially when that way seemed to benefit the patriarchy and individual men. It seems like a very obvious thing to question for a feminist.

I’m banging my head against the wall that it’s not done systematically. What is your perspective on what we call the born this way doctrine that, that says that, women, some women are born, most women are born heterosexual, and some women are born lesbians?

LAUREN: First of all the born that way doctrine is unsupported by either scientific or anecdotal evidence.

There’s just no reputable scientific evidence for genetic basis for lesbianism, and many lesbians will tell you that their sexuality has changed. And born that way doc- dogma is completely unable to predict a woman’s future behavior. L- Let me give you an example. Let’s say a woman’s sexual history is heterosexual based on behavior, heterosexual, then lesbian, then heterosexual again.

And she claims that she was heterosexual and then lesbian and then heterosexual again. So born that way may offer three completely conflicting explanations for that behavior First, she’s really a lesbian, but she succumbed to society’s compulsory heterosexuality. Two, she’s bisexual and always was and always will be.

Third, she’s really heterosexual and was just experimenting with lesbianism, and breaking lesbians’ hearts, by the way, and you should avoid her. So i- in fact, b- born that way rewrites a woman’s history every time her behavior changes because her behavior needs to be reframed each time in terms of innateness.

It’s so strained. It’s it just, it needs to break. But as hard as they work at the reframing, the proponents of born that way remain unable to predict future behavior, and the poor woman is likely to be socially punished and ostracized by a lot of lesbians. The whole thing is-

it is dysfunctional and not in our interests. But also, I think that the born that way doctrine is detrimental to the interests of lesbians and all women like this. The most basic unit of patriarchy is the heterosexual nuclear family. Consciously or not, lesbians undermine patriarchy simply by existing because lesbian family units are not typically under a man’s leadership, and that violates patriarchal taboos every which way because it constitutes living proof that male domination of female bodies is not inevitable or natural or, right?

In fact, a lesbian household without a male head is a model of women’s agency. There are women who are not controlled by men sexually, even if they are in some ways economically dependent on men, as nearly everyone is i- in some way. But lesbians are not controlled by men sexually, and they exercise agency regarding household decisions.

The doctrine of born that way negates lesbian agency. The script goes, born that way script goes, “I can’t help being a lesbian.” It conveys both helplessness and lack of an- agency, and also it conveys a defensive posture implying, “I wouldn’t be a lesbian if I could help it. I would surely choose to conform to patriarchal definitions of normality and goodness and godliness, whatever, if only I could.”

So born that way neutralizes the potential of lesbianism to undermine patriarchy

ANGELA: Yes, but in fact, a lot of women who believe in the born that way dogma, as you call it would just simply deny that anything to do with sexuality is even political. And I agree with you that from the moment you deny access to your body, from the moment you, from the moment you live outside of a patriarchal household, it is political.

From the moment you say no, it is political for us. Would you think benefits from the idea that sexual orientation is innate?

LAUREN: Well, I think men and the patriarchal status quo benefit from the doctrine of born that way. And here’s how. Multiple ways. First it reassures men that their wives won’t turn lesbian.

Second, it confirms... they might be wrong, but it reassures them in the meantime. Second, it confirms the patriarchal trope that straight women have no sexual agency. “Can’t help loving that man of mine,” song from Broadway show called Showboat. It signals involuntary loyalty to all men forever.

And third it works against the interests of lesbians so that’s good for patriarchy, by creating barriers, divisions between established lesbians and would-be lesbians, and creates barriers between gold star lesbians and lesbians who have had a sexual history with men. A really short quote from our essay in I Wish I Was a Lesbian, “The doctrine keeps lesbian communities small, defensive, suspicious, unwelcoming, fragile, and most crucially, apolitical.

Of course we’re not coming for your wives and daughters. They can’t become lesbians. We are no threat. Please don’t hit us now.”

ANGELA: Yeah, we are not a threat to you. I hear that in the I can’t help it. And then of course, well, if we are lesbian and we are feminist, we are a threat, in fact.

It is, I keep on thinking about that that idea that lesbianism and feminism will destroy society, that mostly right-wing men repeat over and over again. But really what they mean is they would, if we were to pursue in that way, we would destroy patriarchy. That’s, I think that’s the fear.

That’s what they mean, and I think they know it. And I’m amazed that more lesbians and more feminists who are heterosexual don’t see that the connection of the two is potentially deadly for the patriarchy, which is why I’m doing what I’m doing. But anyway. Can you explain how the concept of born this way connects with compulsory heterosexuality?

So we hear a lot of comphet in in social media. It’s quite a popular theme amongst young lesbians. What would you make of those two concepts?

LAUREN: It’s a little complicated, but I think that I see comphet, I’m gonna call it comphet I, I see it as a section, that section of patriarchy’s arsenal that ensures men’s access to as many women as possible and makes that access into a required norm Compulsory marriage is one weapon in the arsenal of comphet.

Lesbian erasure coupled with lesbian punishment is another weapon in the arsenal of comphet. And the doctrine of born that way props up comphet ideologically. The script is something like, “If you’re straight now, you will always be straight. And if you think you can change, lesbians themselves

Even lesbians will reject you as a lesbian.” So i- if a woman eventually rejects comp- comphet and becomes a lesbian, some lesbians will deny her her successful exercise of agency, explaining that she merely discovered her innate sexuality, which had been hidden from her by comphet. If that woman resists the born that way explanation and insists that she consciously and successfully rejected comphet, lesbians who promote born that way will not accept her into their communities as a lesbian sister.

In that way, the born that way doctrine actually supports comphet and su- shuts down any consideration of lesbian agency and lesbian political power.

ANGELA: Mm-hmm. I’m really grateful for your explanation. I think it will speak to a lot of women. It certainly speaks to me with my experience where I was in my early 30s when I found that I could choose, and I did, but in those years leading to that, there was some moment where I thought, “Well, I can’t be a lesbian because I would have known by now.”

Like, if it was some kind of given, knowledge that you have since you are said given age and with never any doubt, and with never, ever any relationship with men. So even without having been directly, confronted to a very strong born that way ideology, I still completely had internalized that for a very long time, and I agree, it’s, it kept me in heterosexuality for much longer than necessary.

It’s always too long. You said you consider the debates about the origin of lesbian identity to be a distraction from radical feminism activism. What do you mean by that?

LAUREN: So nobody is asking straight women how they came to be straight, and nobody’s asking men why they enjoy drugging women and raping them, for instance.

So to me, that’s a signal that the question about lesbian origin in particular is part of a patriarchal agenda, the question itself. As we wrote in I Wish I Was a Lesbian The idea that lesbians should have to expose their feelings for dissection by a male-dominated institution or justify them so that a jury may debate their legitimacy and worth is, as we have indicated throughout this article, a fundamentally patriarchal one meant to keep women divided, distrustful of each other, and unable to work together.

And so the patriarchal interest is served, and lesbians will remain a tiny oppressed group fighting for a few more crumbs, a few more rights within a system of male dom- domination, which remains.

ANGELA: True. It also needs to be said that when you are a lesbian and you are perceived as a lesbian, no man will ask you whether you choose it or not before he calls you a dyke in the street, before you get, beaten or discriminated against or whatever may happen to you.

And that seemed to me such a weird divide. It always has been. So to carry on this idea, we are often told that mentioning, even mentioning the idea that women can choose lesbianism, like so many of us did, is dangerous, capital letter, because we, if we can choose to become lesbian, then it would mean that conversion therapy works, and it sometime- somehow legitimizes and supports conversion therapy.

What are your thoughts about how and how you respond to this argument?

LAUREN: Hear that all the time. Let’s be clear. Conversion therapy is unethical because it violates women’s agency and because it has historically involved actual physical and emotional torture. It’s unethical for those reasons, whether or not it’s effective that’s the first, that’s the first response.

The question of whether whether an innate sexuality is a basis for legal rights, I, I think that question is a non-starter. Legal rights must not be based on a lie. How can you defend something that’s based on a lie? . Right. Sexual orientation is not the same as race or sex, which are based on immutable physical characteristics, and sexual orientation should not be treated in law as though it is the same.

But despite sexual orientation not being the same as race or sex, lesbians are nonetheless entitled to full civil rights anyway

ANGELA: Yes. So do you think lesbian activists should approach a securing of lesbian right without realizing on those fictional biological determinist ideas?

LAUREN: A- absolutely. How you do it specifically depends on the precedents in your particular jurisdiction.

But lesbians should be arguing that women are fully human and entitled to full human rights, including agency. We should be demanding that those who oppose lesbian rights should bear the legal burden of demonstrating why promoting discrimination against lesbians is in any way a legitimate government function or a legitimate social goal.

Right.

ANGELA: I was talking to Lynn Alderson and several other activists who were saying that the idea of being born this way as a legal defense was born out of the gay and lesbian movement as a strategy, not as a belief that it was true, because it would be fighting conservative right-wing ideology with, on their own basis that God made me this way, and I cannot help it.

So if you believe that, God makes people perfect, then you have to accept us. And I really hate this idea of using this kind of ... the opponent’s weapon, really, when there’s no, when there’s no evidence, of course. But also knowing now that it was a strategy that was used deliberately doesn’t make it a fact.

It’s incredible that like, such a generation of lesbians have completely internalized that. It’s kind of a medical condition. They’ve accepted the patriarchal definition of lesbianism, and I find it really sad.

LAUREN: Well, it’s, it was a mistake to make it a strategy.

ANGELA: Yeah.

LAUREN: Well, Absolutely a mistake.

Once you make it a strategy, then what do y- you can’t, then you can’t contradict it if you want, if you like the result.

ANGELA: Yeah. So you and a group of your colleagues at WGI Lesbian Caucus, which you were part of contributed to the book, ta-da, and I Wish I Was A Lesbian. Can you tell us a little bit about your group contribution, why you wanted it to be a group?

What did it cover?

LAUREN: So originally, Angela you reached out to me to write about political lesbianism a- as myself, as an individual, and I welcomed the opportunity and I was very grateful for it. But I wanted to write the essay collectively as part of the WDI USA Lesbian Caucus, first because the lesbian caucus at that time, which was many months ago, was, in my opinion, an outstanding team made up of radical feminists doing exciting original thinking and original writing.

And second, because women’s liberation will require collective strategies and collective actions. So why not model collectivity in our writing process? And third, because I thought that pooling our experiential data would strengthen our database and deepen our analysis, and I can tell you that it definitely did.

I was very happy that you agreed to our collective authorship, and I thank you for it. It’s a better piece because it was w- it was written by all four of us.

ANGELA: Well, I agree on the, on your principles or what you’ve just said. So yes, is there anything you would like to say about the piece itself?

LAUREN: I think I think the piece speaks for itself, and I think I’ve gone through a lot of a lot of the topics that, that we covered in the piece. Mm-hmm. So I recommend that that people read it in detail because the details are the details are the best part, in my opinion.

ANGELA: Yeah.

Yeah. No I I really welcomed that you wanted to do a group contribution. I think it’s really interesting, which is also why I wanted to do a group project because I believe in that. But also you are so efficient in delivering that, and it was like such an accurate, precisely worded text. So yes, I recommend everybody should read it.

Thank you. I want to ask you, do you see a link between what men do to women in compulsory heterosexuality and what men do to women in transgender- transgenderism? Do you think that there’s some similarities some crossover? Do you think it’s important to oppose both these ideologies, or why?

What would you say to this question?

LAUREN: Sure. They’re part and parcel of the same thing. I ran into transgender and transgenderism in the, i- in the mid to late 1990s. And m- men, the f- its first manifestation, I was to to put men into a lesbian rap group at our LBG- LGB community center.

A- and they just sent in one very young man, he was about 18, and he was he was very feminine. He was a very feminine young man. And it instantly wrecked the lesbian rap group, of course.

ANGELA: Wow.

LAUREN: Because the, because patriarchy. Because men can do that. Because he changed the nature of the conversation so that it was about his problems, and the poor thing couldn’t get a passport that didn’t contradict what he wanted to be, for instance, at that time.

And because patriarchy there were some lesbians in that rap group who supported him, and instantly it was a division. Instantly there was a division among lesbians and he had created it. And that’s what patriarchy does. That’s a, th- there’s no difference be- between that and a man feeling that he can come up to a group of women at a bar and say, “Hello ladies, I see that you’re alone.

Let me join you.”

ANGELA: Mm-hmm.

LAUREN: It’s the same, and then it wrecks the group because there’s always one or two women who will say, “Sure. You poor thing, you mustn’t be alone.”

ANGELA: Yes.

LAUREN: A- and it’s, yeah it’s absolutely destroyed lesbian community as we know. And and destroying lesbian community goes to the heart of destroying women’s rights.

ANGELA: Yeah. I came across it when I became a lesbian, which was in 2012, where I finally was able to call myself a lesbian. And what happened in 2012, it’s the birth, really the birth date of the Cotton Ceiling, the first Planned Parenthood workshop on the Cotton Ceiling, which allowed men who, who are who call themself lesbians to talk about the awful discrimination that they face when lesbians accept them in the group, the one you described, but refuse to have sex with them.

Cotton being the cotton of the underwear of the woman who has a boundary. And I remember feeling absolutely, so outraged thinking I’ve escaped after all these years. I’m able to see the oppression. I’m able to see compulsory heterosexuality. I’m now leaving. I’m looking for an alternative, and even that they will colonize.

Even that they will put compulsory heterosexuality on women who’ve already said no over and over again. And yeah, I’ve spoken to many lesbians in, who have seen what you have seen in the ‘90s as well, and it just keeps on happening, I’m afraid.

LAUREN: Yes. They’re very inventive, I have to give them that.

They’re very creative in the ways that they they go after women’s rights a- and women’s... Th- they really want us to remain colonized, and they learn from they learn from their past mistakes.

ANGELA: Mm-hmm.

LAUREN: They probably won’t make the same mistakes again.

ANGELA: Yeah, I agree. And then they also target, as you say, places where, or situation where they know it will do the most damage.

And I think the fact that the lesbian community’s been targeted for so long, both with the Cotton Ceiling, the invasion, and also the transitioning of lesbians into being trans men, means that there’s very little left when it comes to it now. Yeah. So I want to discuss a little bit more, like, from a bro- broader perspective, and the book is very much an inter- intergenerational dialogue between women.

I wanted women to be represented across different generation and it goes from 20s to 70s, which is really great. What lesson from your experience do you think are most relevant for the younger generations today, what’s happening now, both for lesbians and heterosexual? I know it’s a huge question, so just,

LAUREN: There’s so much, but I’ll try to just pick a couple of things-

That I think are crucial. And that it may be overlooked a little bit. So as I mentioned, the second wave of the women’s liberation movement was skeptical of anything that was claimed to be innate or natural. Quoting from our article “Women of the second wave of feminism, in fact, chose to deliberately assume that any given characteristic of women is a product of socialization because that starting point allows all behavior to be analyzed.

Perhaps some behaviors are innate to our sex, but in any given scenario, is it useful to assume that?” The idea that we’re naturally or biologically or born any way serves as a thought-terminating device, creating sealed boxes that nobody thinks can be opened or should be opened, I would add. So I especially recommend that kind of skepticism about anything that patriarchy throws at us going forward.

But also- Let’s bear in mind that the born that way doctrine is in trouble because heterosexuality is in trouble, and because patriarchy is in trouble. There’s the 4B movement, for instance which stands for no sex with men, no dating men, no marriage with men, no kids. There’s women disenchanted with men’s rights.

You see it all over social media. They’re disenchanted with... they’re up to here with incels. They’re up to here with femicide. Angry, right? Anger. I love anger, right? Anger is our friend. Lesbians sh- I think should be encouraging the born that way dogma to stop stretching itself and bending itself into pretzels to try to make nonsense out of everything, and just let it break.

I think we should be welcoming new lesbians. Let’s make coming out easy. Let’s avoid suspicion and exclusion of women, and how about we avoid hierarchies as much as possible? Don’t we want to attract, including ourselves? Don’t we want to love our community? Ca- can we model egalitarianism? Can we eroticize egalitarianism, as Sheila Jeffreys has suggested on numerous occasions?

Yeah.

ANGELA: Yeah. I think this idea of the possibility of equality and eroticizing s- eroticizing equality is a theme that I’ve seen over and over when I’ve interviewed women, or in the book. And I think it speaks to women that, that, who are not there yet. I think that’s why this sentence, “I wish I was a lesbian,” comes so often, because women see the end of heterosexuality for them.

They’re like, “I can’t do this anymore.” And I hope that what you’re saying really gets heard because, yes, being, believing in born this way is just, as you say, thought ter- terminating device. It just stops you thinking. That’s it. It just stops you thinking analyzing, and thinking about your life and what you want, like there is no choice.

And, especially, for a lot of women who believe in the idea of my body, my choice, but somehow it stops- It stops at sexuality. Why? Sexuality is a behavior. You should be able to choose what behavior you want in your life. Yes. And so to finish, that would be the last question, what would you say to a woman if a woman was in front of you and said she wanted to be a lesbian but she told you she can’t because she’s not born one.

What, how would you respond to that? What would be your take?

LAUREN: I’d say, “Honey, you have agency. Many women have successfully chosen to become lesbians. It is possible. It’s not difficult. Women are so very easy to love if you just pay attention to them. Consciousness raising has been shown to be hugely helpful in this respect.

You can join one of my CR groups online, or you can join a group in person locally, or you can even research how to do consciousness raising and start your own group. It just helps to have sisters supporting you in this process from wherever they are in this process. And I want you to know that some of us lifelong lesbians will welcome you into our communities and into our liberation movements with open arms and open hearts.”

ANGELA: Thank you so much. This is really beautiful.

LAUREN: Thank you, Angela, for this wonderful broo- book and for giving us the opportunity to be part of it.

ANGELA: I’m really glad that you enjoy the process. All the links and resources that Lauren talks about will be put under that piece so you can join.

There’s also some good links on consciousness raising that we can definitely add under that so you can do your own research and have a lot of happiness doing this. Thank you so much, Lauren, for this really amazing and in-depth conversation that’s taken us through decades and generations, and we’ve covered quite a lot of ground today both historically and theoretically, and that’s amazing.

LAUREN: I just got my book.

ANGELA: Oh, you

LAUREN: did? Yes, I just got it, and I literally can’t wait to read everybody else’s article. I haven’t read them yet, and I really am looking forward to it, so that’s what I’ll be doing in the next couple of days.

ANGELA: Excellent. Well, I hope you enjoy.

And if our audience, you’ve enjoyed watching this and you would like to hear more about this kind of topic, please like and subscribe to this channel. Of course, share it with a woman you think might find it interesting. If you want to read more, there’s a book here, I Wish I Was a Lesbian: Women’s Lives Beyond Heterosexuality.

In it, there’s also a hell of a lot of resources that you can find, plenty of links, plenty of other books to read. So until next time, take good care, stay curious, stay away from men, and we’ll see you soon. Bye.

Whether you think of yourself as a lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual, questioning, or simply interested in feminist theory and women’s history, this conversation challenges conventional assumptions about sexuality and freedom.

I Wish I Was a Lesbian: Women’s Lives Beyond

Heterosexuality is available now from Spinifex

Press

Interested in joining an online, international radical feminist consciousness raising group with Lauren?

Email womenfirst@aol.com

Subscribe to Lauren Levey’s substack

Related X accounts that you can follow:

@LaurenFLevey

@RadFemLes_USA

If you enjoyed this conversation, please like, subscribe, and share it with a woman who may find it interesting.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Share

Together, they explore some of the most controversial and important questions facing women today:

🔹 What was it like growing up in the conservative culture of the 1950s?

🔹 How did the revolutionary movements of the 1960s shape feminist consciousness?

🔹 Is sexual orientation innate, socially influenced, or something more complex?

🔹 What is the “born this way” doctrine, and who benefits from it?

🔹 How does compulsory heterosexuality shape women’s lives and choices?

🔹 Can women consciously choose lesbianism?

🔹 Does rejecting biological determinism threaten lesbian rights—or strengthen them?

🔹 What can younger generations learn from the Women’s Liberation Movement?

Lauren shares her personal journey into lesbian feminism, reflects on decades of activism, discusses her contribution to I Wish I Was a Lesbian: Women’s Lives Beyond Heterosexuality, and offers a powerful perspective on women’s liberation, political lesbianism, and the future of feminist organising.

Whether you think of yourself as a lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual, questioning, or simply interested in feminist theory and women’s history, this conversation challenges conventional assumptions about sexuality and freedom.

📖 I Wish I Was a Lesbian: Women’s Lives Beyond Heterosexuality is available now from Spinifex Press: https://www.spinifexpress.com.au/shop/p/97...

Interested in joining an online, international radical feminist consciousness raising group with Lauren? Email womenfirst@aol.com

Link to Lauren Levey’s substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/laurenlevey

Related X accounts that you can follow:
@LaurenFLevey
@RadFemLes_USA

🎧 Follow I Wish I Was a Lesbian on:
• YouTube
• Spotify
• Substack

👍 If you enjoyed this conversation, please like, subscribe, and share it with a woman who may find it interesting.

Subscribe now

Share

What if heterosexuality wasn’t innate-but something women were taught, expected, even pressured into?

What if there were an alternative to the dissatisfaction, confusion, or harm many women have experienced in relationships with men?

What if sexual orientation wasn’t fixed —but could change?

And what if... any woman could be a lesbian?

Right now, more and more women are stepping away from men. And many are saying something that surprises even themselves: “I wish I was a lesbian.”

This is I Wish I Was a Lesbian- a channel that challenges what we’ve been told about sex, desire, relationships, and choice.

In this series, we will speak with women who have left heterosexuality behind to lead a lesbian life - and ask whether becoming lesbian is indeed possible for any woman who wants to make that choice.

See you soon!

Subscribe now

Share