Lesbian Visibility Week: a week that aims to show solidarity with all people who identify as a lesbian. This week occurs from Monday, April 24th to Sunday, April 30th.

Firstly, I think it is important to simply define the term lesbian: non-men loving other non-men. Despite lesbians sometimes being denoted as women having attraction to other women, it is crucial to understand that not all lesbians identify as women. For example, non-binary people can also be lesbians, especially as gender does not equal sexual orientation, and thus, the converse also holds true.

Considering that lesbians are sometimes women, one of the main issues that the community faces is erasure in a patriarchal society. Even though homophobic issues still arise for all groups, more feminine-presenting queer people or queer women are—objectively, in some cases—seen as inferior in comparison to queer men. Often, lesbian couples get less recognition than queer male couples do.

One of the most prominent examples of this was the HIV and AIDS epidemic, a moment often included in queer history. This crisis created a detrimental societal stigma surrounding people with AIDS as well as people who were close to those struggling. During this time when gay men were suffering, lesbians were the people fighting alongside them—standing up for them and taking care of them. Even within their own queer community, lesbians have experienced misogyny for countless decades. Throughout the HIV and AIDS epidemic, gay men believed the movement should focus entirely on them, rather than including all queer people.

Despite the history of lesbians that often gets overlooked, they have existed forever, much like queer people of all genders and sexual orientations have.