Tag Archives: heteronormativity

‘The Same Difference’ Documentary Highlights Deep-Rooted Problems Within the Lesbian Community

When you’re part of a marginalised group, ‘there’s a high chance of discrimination’ is almost inked in small print at the bottom of the sign-up sheet, as is the nature of the thing.

It’s something we must strive to espouse through legal means (in helping change laws, for example) or perhaps through voicing opinions and changing viewpoints or by helping encourage and foster diversity amongst the exclusionary straight, white, boys club ranks that the patriarchy kindly laid out for each and everyone of us, with homophobic and racist foundations to boot.

But what happens when what you’re up against is far bigger than you imagined? What happens when they problems you face are not just external, but when the very people who identify as you do turn their backs against you for arbitrary reasons that for some reason are marginalising you even more than society already does?

For many within the lesbian community this happens regularly, which is why one filmmaker has put together ‘The Same Difference’, a documentary to help point it out.

Depicted in the above teaser trailer The Same Difference plans to cover what are arguably some of the biggest social challenges (e.g things outside of legal recognition and same-gender marriage) facing the lesbian community today – within themselves.

Borked mindsets suggest that despite already not conforming to the socially accepted norm (‘heteronormativity’) some lesbian identified women feel that it’s their onus to force each other into these norms, as if lesbians are square pegs to be fit into round holes. That’s obviously not the case, but why should a group further alienate or segregate itself on account of discriminatory ideals that the group doesn’t prescribe to in the first place?

The examples of this that The Same Difference provides extend to studs being unable to observe traits such as long hair or dresses that are often reserved for femme lesbians. While it also covers the topic of bisexuals within the lesbian community and why some people just don’t understand that a woman who loves another woman should be welcomed into a group of women-loving-women with lady-loving arms rather than being shunned because their place on the Kinsey Scale isn’t quite where some would like it to be.

The Same Difference is inarguably important then, for the topics it sheds much needed light on and you can find more out about it at the link below.