Get out!

May 2011

Kate Brown, Oregon Secretary of State. Kate Clinton, stand-up comedienne. Ellen DeGeneres, actress and television host. Melissa Etheridge, rock singer. Rosie Jones, golfer. Martina Navratilova, tennis player. Cynthia Nixon, actress. Rosie O’Donnell, television host. Suze Orman, financial advisor and motivational speaker. Guinevere Turner, producer. Cat Cora, chef. Annie Leibowitz, photographer. Denise Simmons, former mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sheryil Swoopes, basketball player. Linda Villarosa, journalist. Alice Walker, writer. These are just a few names of lesbians who are out and proud in the USA and other parts of the world. I can’t for the life of me make a Spanish version of this list, because there is hardly any famous woman in this country who is out as a lesbian. Are you going to tell me that no actress, singer, politician, writer, sportswoman, journalist, artist, or any other public professional belongs to the tribe of Sappho? Come on!

Same-sex marriage has been legal in Spain since July 2005. Lesbians have been raising kids for years and are now doing it openly and fighting to make our children’s schools safer for them. We write blogs, live openly and expose ourselves to our families and neighbors in order to make a better, fairer and more diverse world. We could definitely do with some role models who appear on television and newspapers, who write books and make movies, who play sports and hang their paintings in museums, who belong to political parties and other organizations, who, in short, create opinion and contribute to erasing the shame and the social stigma associated with lesbianism. We need them because they can access powerful means of communication that are denied to anonymous citizens and because they can show people that lesbians come in all shapes and colors, that we can be best-selling authors, vice presidents, athletes, actresses, intellectuals… you name it!

Can someone tell me what is wrong with these women? I have heard of some of them (you would be surprised) who have been seen in Chueca, Madrid’s gay neighborhood, kissing their girlfriends while having a beer, or in a fertility clinic with their wives, trying to become pregnant. Enjoying the rights that we, the lesbians who are out of the closet and have been fighting for years and years, have gained. Well, you are welcome!

Some people may argue that sexual orientation is a private issue, but, how funny, it never is when we are talking about straight couples such as Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem. Besides, since the seventies and thanks to feminism, we know that “the personal is political”, which means that any part of our personal lives can be affected by a political situation and vice versa, that the way we live our personal lives can affect politics and change the world for the better or for the worse. I am sure that if more popular women came out as lesbians, discrimination rates would decrease significantly and negative stereotypes would be part of an ignorant past.

MiraLes magazine released a great video for Lesbian Visibility Day, which is April 26th. At the end of the video, there is a message for these closeted women who could make such an amazing difference: “Your visibility is our freedom. Become visible”. The gain would be indeed much greater than the loss. For lesbians, for the society in general and especially for them, who would finally live their lives with the dignity that pride confers.

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