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Why The Useless Lesbian Trope Is More Depressing Than It Seems
Not just a funny meme it turns out
Useless Lesbian: A lesbian who can’t take a hint that another girl likes her, no matter how obvious it is, Urban Dictionary, 2018
Most of us have heard of this trope — lesbians are not skilled in noticing signals sent by other girls. Even if, by some miracle, we do see a hint of some kind, we are definitely not good at acting upon it. In fact, at least 84.7% of lesbians are incapable of telling another lesbian how they feel (disclaimer: this is a completely made-up statistic, that survey would never happen).
This is such a given, so treated as a fact of gay life, that it’s a meme at this point. And not the kind of meme that’s funny for a few days and then trails off into the wind, but the kind that will linger forever if we allow it to. Unfortunately, like many funny things, it’s rooted in something kind of sad.
Although they may not sound similar, this trope has a lot in common with how uncomfortable WLW (women who love women) found communal changing rooms at school. No matter how we actually feel or what we want to do, we feel like we’re under a spotlight in those situations. We can quickly go from feeling totally invisible, to feeling as though everyone is watching our every movement in case of any…
