Some people took offense at the event's new feminine name. That fall, Stutzman handed responsibility for the event to Alissa Young, who renamed the event Gal Pals, relocated it to the Florida Room on North Killingsworth Street, and ran into more trouble. "It got weird and political, and I wanted it to be a fun thing." "Everything I tried, someone was offended," she says. But even with the change, Stutzman still worried. Instead, she called it an event for queer women. Stutzman adjusted her language, no longer calling Fantasy Softball League a lesbian event. "What we wanted to say is, if you're a straight dude, don't come to this event," she says. She thought her event was inclusive, even if the vernacular wasn't. As she looked around, she saw many people who fell between male and female. The person-Stutzman never got a name-left the event, and Stutzman was left feeling confused. "This person was offended and said they would tell their friends that we were a group of people that were non-inclusive and not respectful of their gender." "The person was hostile, and wanting to pick a fight," Stutzman recalls. In summer 2015, Stutzman, who has wavy red hair and wears an enameled "I Love Cats" pin on her jean jacket, recalls walking through Vendetta greeting people when someone she'd never met-someone who didn't identify with traditional female conventions like the pronoun "she"-confronted her. "Cool girls, drinking cool drinks in a cool bar, talking about cool stuff." The "league" had nothing to do with softball, and instead was a monthly meet-up at Vendetta, a bar on North Williams Avenue. So that year she decided to create her own social gathering for lesbians, calling it Fantasy Softball League, a winking nod to stereotypes about lesbians. SPACE MAKER: Emily Stutzman, 31, tried to create a regular get-together in Portland for lesbians. In 2014, after ending a romantic relationship, an unsettling thought struck her: "How do I find somebody else?" It ended poorly.Ī producer for a Portland ad agency, Stutzman says she couldn't find places in the city to hang out with other lesbians after moving here from Indiana in 2008. "I often feel like lesbians are forgotten or left behind," she says, "and sometimes it feels lonely."Įmily Stutzman, 31, tried to create a space for lesbians. She says she has never been around so many queer people in her life, but she was often among a minority who identified as lesbian. Trish Bendix, former editor of AfterEllen, an online publication about lesbian, queer and bisexual women in the media, lived in Portland from 2011 to 2014. But they are increasingly the battlegrounds over how people see themselves and how the world sees and treats them-and those views strain friendships, shutter events and start internet flame wars.
The fights over language may seem academic and obscure if you're not part of them. And lesbian-owned bars that draw lesbian customers, like Escape, shun the label so as not to offend. This past summer, semi-regular parties for lesbians, like Lesbian Night at Old Town's CC Slaughters, changed their names and focus to avoid controversy and be more inclusive. In the past two years, events catering to lesbians, like the monthly meet-up Fantasy Softball League, have been targeted online as unsafe spaces for trans women and others who don't identify with feminine pronouns. The result? Announcing that a Portland party is intended exclusively for lesbians is stepping into a minefield of identity politics. “We don’t limit ourselves to this,” Elliott says. Elliott rejects masculine and feminine pronouns-as well as the label lesbian, calling it too specific. But am I a girl? And do I only like girls? No."ĭEFYING CATEGORIES: Llondyn Elliott, 19, identifies as non-binary. "It's really restricting to me to say I'm a lesbian. "I've never felt comfortable with the term lesbian," says Llondyn Elliott, 19, who identifies as non-binary. In PSU's recent survey of students and their identities, more students identified as "pansexual" than lesbian (see glossary).Īnd PSU's students are typical of their generation. This fall, Portland State University allowed students to choose from nine genders and nine sexual orientations when filling out demographic paperwork. The transgender rights movement that's gained steam in recent years has exploded the categories of gay and straight and male and female. Did the lesbian bar disappear because people's identities splintered, leaving behind too few people to patronize women-only spaces? Or did it vanish because mainstream culture has evolved, turning every bar in Portland-from Sloan's Tavern to the Florida Room-into an unofficial lesbian bar?