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Today in my English seminar on Utopia, Dystopia and Anti-Utopia I found myself laughing as we discussed the topic of feminism. I have been known in the past to consider myself a feminist, following the ideology of first wave feminism believing that we do not yet live in a post feminist world and that equality between the sexes is necessary and has yet to be obtained.
Today my lectured asked how many of us considered ourselves to be feminist and before anybody could answer one of the male members of the class said that he was a feminist of sorts and that he hoped that most of society was as we should all be working towards complete equality. My lecturer then began to address the issue of why it is there is such a huge stigma attached to being labelled feminist, even feminist writers to not want to be recognised by the label of being a feminist female writer.
Normally when we hear the word feminist we think, butch lesbian wearing dungarees, burning her bra and hating men. This portrait is true as I can say with certainty that when you say the word feminist this image comes to mind for many people. This in turn started me thinking about the idea of the image of a lesbian, in society there seems to be two types of image for lesbians. One is the film version where both girls are extraordinarily hot and the other is the everyday butch with the bad hair and the check shirt and no bra.
Thinking about this I remembered a comment from a family member when she told me;
"it is strange to see two pretty girls together, when we were growing up it was only butch women who could be lesbians."
This lead me to look up some posters of what society perceives to be lesbian and how as a minority we are sold to society in many different ways.
These things interest me as the whole world seems to be obsessed with labels these days and I think feminists and lesbians are an interesting case study to look at!
I hope you enjoy the posters mi amor, Te amo!!!

















D. Mount