Why are lesbians still invisible in popular culture?

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy I’m looking for a greeting card in a high street store, and it’s amusing to see how many feature slogans like “Yaaaaaaas Kween” or “U Okay Hun?”, or feature the faces of the Queer Eye cast. Consider a lesbian equivalent of Queer Eye: Four lesbians and their non-binary pal cycle from town to town liberating heterosexual women from the oppression of make-up and stilettos, help them pick out the optimum weatherproof jacket, and introduce them to the joys of homemade hummus, camping holidays and armpit hair. Queer women are either hypersexualised – as is evidenced by the plethora of male directors who seem preoccupied with filming lengthy prurient lesbian sex scenes from Blue is the Warmest Colour, The Handmaiden, Disobedience, yes, even the wonderful Carol, and the most recent Benedetta. From the women beaten up on a London bus, to the horrors of “corrective rape” experienced by black lesbians in South Africa, to the horrific attack on Teresa Butz and Jennifer Hopper, a lesbian couple in America who caught the eye of a passer-by – a story that has kept me lying awake in fear, readjusting my curtains and triple checking my locks more nights than I care to remember.