There’s this thing on the internet, “men written by a woman.” It describes a kind of man who displays an attentive, empathetic, and charismatic sensibility that women who date men find attractive. Examples would be celebrities like Pedro Pascal and Andrew Garfield, and characters like Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice (2005) or Peter in To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018). (These men, of course, were written by women). He is a step up from a himbo—he is a man of substance who is unintimidated, and in fact energized by, a woman of substance. As a queer lesbian, I’ve noticed there is a kind of straight woman celebrity who cultivates a similar erotic dynamic for queer women. I call her “the woman written by lesbians.”
Greta Gerwig, Zendaya, Cate Blanchett, Sandra Oh, Annette Benning, Lily Gladstone, Zoë Kravitz AND her mother, Lisa Bonet—these are a few of the women who have lesbians all across the globe (probably) scratching our heads, and wiping drool from our lips. There’s a certain way these women carry themselves, dress themselves (or, styled by their teams of stylists), that just reads very gay. You can call it gaydar, or delusion, but these women walk, talk, and look like lesbians.
To be written by a lesbian, you need to have a self-assured, worn-in sex appeal, like a soft yet sturdy pair of vintage jeans. There is an ease and a knowing smolder that exudes from their pores. It is an energy that allows queer women to identify with these celebrities and imagine them as potential partners.
Unlike “men written by women,” this dynamic is tricky because it often involves an element of projection. With “men written by women,” these men are already heterosexual, but possess certain especially rare and desirable qualities that women want, like not taking up too much space, emotional maturity, open communication, and respecting their partners’ careers. It’s complicated for queer women to project erotic identification onto celebrities because they are real people who have not publicly claimed queer identities.
Many times, these celebrities play queer characters, which is how queer women often begin to read them as “queer icons.” Some, like Natasha Lyonne or Cate Blanchett, have even played roles in canonical lesbian films, like But I’m a Cheerleader (1997) and Carol (2015). Then there’s Sandra Oh in Killing Eve, Cate Blanchett (again) in TAR, Lily Gladstone in Under the Bridge, Zendaya in Euphoria, Zoë Kravitz in High Fidelity, Annette Benning in The Kids Are Alright…you get the picture.
In a beautiful episode of Actors on Actors, Natasha Lyonne and Melanie Lynskey discuss their status as straight women in the lesbian canon. It’s complicated for them. At the time in Hollywood (the late 1990s), it was so rare that a woman would be openly gay that it did not occur to them that they would be “taking a spot” from a queer actress.1 As women, they wanted to play complex, interesting people. They wanted to portray depth, and struggle, and something real. It just so happened that these roles were also queer stories. Lesbians make their lives without seeking constant approval of men, and this is appealing to many feminist women like Lyonne and Lynskey.
It takes guts and a certain “fuck it” attitude to enter the lesbian public imaginary. To take on these roles, these women had to expect that they might be considered queer and therefore hypersexualized. This is a tall order for actresses who are already sexually vulnerable in their industry. They risked becoming either uninteresting to men, male audiences, and male directors, and therefore disposable, or desirable in the wrong ways…and therefore disposable.
In his memoir Pageboy (2023), Elliot Page discusses the skeevy advances of an unnamed Hollywood heavyweight who told him, “I’m going to f*ck you to make you realize you aren’t gay.” This kind of harassment is familiar to me. I once worked at a restaurant where a male coworker told another, “She says she’s gay but I bet I could turn her.” This kind of harassment is not harmless. It is insidious, violent and sickening. I am grateful to these women who were unafraid to be visibly lesbian, especially given that the vast majority of them seem to take the gravity of the roles very seriously.
I am reticent to speculate about other people’s sexuality, no matter how removed celebrities may feel. I didn’t used to be. I used to love it. But since I began my current relationship, I slowly became less and less interested in surface level appearances of sexuality. So I’m not interested in speculating on these women’s actual sexuality. People themselves cannot “queer bait,” and part of the reason why many of the women named here have entered lesbian iconography is because of their excellent performances in queer stories.2
At the same time, I am attentive to the ways in which queer women are often unfairly accused of being “creepy” or “predatory” for speculating that a female celebrity may be queer. This accusation is an extension of the ways in which lesbians and queer people more broadly are stigmatized. Gay people are considered hypersexual, deviant, and in this way often associated with perverse sexual practices like pedophilia. So yes, I offer the notion of “women written by lesbians” as a way of considering this dynamic without intruding upon their individual sexualities. But I also think it’s pretty harmless for lesbians to wonder if actresses may be gay. It’s also clear that in the case of many actress’s, their role selection suggests that they are completely fine with looking gay in public. It’s really not that bad to be called gay, I promise.3
That all being said, I do love when queer actors get to portray queer stories. Like Kiersey Clemmons in Hearts Beat Loud (2018), or Brigette Lundy-Paine in Atypical (2017-2021). My main issue with lesbian reputation, which is a frequent topic of this newsletter, is this: WE DON’T HAVE ENOUGH BUTCH LESBIANS AND MASCULINE WOMEN ON SCREEN. WE DON’T HAVE ENOUGH TRANS HOTTIES ON SCREEN. GET THE HOTTIES ON SCREEN, I BEG OF YOU!!! CUT THEIR HAIR. DON’T MAKE THEM WEAR MAKE-UP. LET MASC BUCH DYKE AND TRANS GUY HOTTIES ENTER MY LOVING GAZE.4
So yes, I love the women written by lesbians. And I love the lesbians written by lesbians, of which I hope to see many, many more. 😘
Ellen Degeneres didn’t come out until 1997, which became a watershed moment for lesbian visibility. There were major flashpoints for lesbian visibility in the 1990s, like k.d. Lang’s iconic magazine cover in 1993, and on a more local scale, the celebrity lesbian hot spot Cafe Tabac in New York City, which operated from 1993-1995.
I recommend this episode of A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein, which delves further into the shifting cultural meaning of “queer baiting” and why it’s less than helpful to accuse actual people (authors, actors) of doing so.
While I believe in respecting self-identification, people online really show who their are when they freak out and “defend” their favorite actress from queer speculation.
Let this be my “I want a dyke for president.”