Sapphic Circle January 18th, 2026: Lesbian Isolation

Sapphic Circle meets the 1st and 3rd Sunday of the month at 12pm PST/3pm EST/8pm UTC.

Sapphic Circle is a space for lesbians to come together for thoughtful discussions on a variety of topics. We seek to build lesbian community through engaging in lesbian ideas, politics, media, and more!

Nothing New

Lesbians are familiar with isolation. We can be isolated for a myriad of reasons, but the one that comes up most often in conversation is a lack of genuine social connection. Never mind dating, never mind a lesbian community—just building authentic friendships can seem impossible.

Feminist theorists have long argued that heterosexual society organizes intimacy in ways that marginalize women who prioritize other women, a system Adrienne Rich famously described as compulsory heterosexuality. Within this framework, relationships between women are devalued unless they are mediated through men, leaving lesbians structurally isolated even when surrounded by others.

We start on the back foot. As lesbians, we do not fit easily into heteronormative culture. When we build interpersonal connections, we prioritize women, a choice that clashes with the expectations of a heterosexual society. Everything from discovering, to building, to maintaining women-centred relationships runs counter to the social messaging and norms in which we are steeped.

When we factor in feminist politics, we find ourselves in no-woman land. As we reach out to build connections with women, we hope that our shared experiences will be enough to overcome our differences. But this hope rarely holds when political divisions emerge. As Sara Ahmed (2010) argues, feminist commitments often position women as affective disruptions within social life. To name inequality is to risk being perceived as the source of tension itself. We are left with two familiar options: share our truths and predictably whittle down our social circles, or bite our tongues and maintain relationships with women who do not fully understand us.

This division of our social lives reflects what sociologists describe as role compartmentalization, the need to perform different versions of ourselves in different social contexts. For lesbians, this often requires managing emotional labour across parallel relationships, carefully rationing honesty in order to preserve connection. As Arlie Hochschild (1983) defined it, emotional labour is “the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display” (p. 7). The emotional cost of biting one’s tongue lies not in silence itself, but in the constant regulation of feeling that silence demands.

How Do We Manage?

Faced with this reality, lesbians have adapted by splitting their social needs. Need someone to binge a new TV show with? Meet up with your local friends, the ones who do not know your real lesbian feminist opinions. Looking for someone receptive to your feminist critique of that same show? Log onto Discord or type up an email to the friends who know you deeply but are not physically nearby.

Ideally, the friend who watches that new show with you would be the same one who wants to hear your unfiltered rant about it. When this ideal is not possible in our local area, we adapt. Through the power of the internet, we step into virtual spaces to spend time with our sisters. These relationships echo what Kath Weston (1991) described as chosen family, networks of care and belonging built outside biological kinship and geographic proximity.

Travel becomes another solution. Just as lesbians once moved to The Big City to find their peers, today some relocate to live near the best friend they met on Tumblr, or move to lesbian retirement communities in search of like-minded women.

Pilgrimages to lesbian and feminist events can be lifelines for the socially isolated lesbian. Maybe it has been a week since she has been hugged by another woman who deeply understands her, but in just 195 days, she will be surrounded by her sisters.

All the work, and all the waiting, that goes into building and sustaining virtual friendships with lesbian feminists can be exhausting. Sometimes we do not have the energy to keep up with the email chain, and instead we find ourselves mindlessly scrolling through social media. There is no need to extend yourself or risk vulnerability when you are not reaching out for connection at all.

Hope For Change

When we are at our lowest, trapped in patterns of social isolation, hope can feel distant. When we are anxious about building friendships with women in our neighbourhoods while simultaneously grieving the distance between ourselves and our feminist friends, the future can look bleak.

Yet when we look back at our herstory, we see that lesbian feminists have always started two steps behind everyone else and still managed to lead beautiful, inspiring lives. The women who came before us often had to bite their tongues around friends who did not have a feminist consciousness, even as they brought other women into feminism while maintaining their convictions. Their lives remind us that connection has never been guaranteed, but deliberately built.

Morris (2016) captures the effort and fragility of creating these support systems:

“As our cultural supports weaken and fall, as we become more isolated, we lose sight that it was us who had the originality, determination, and bravery to create it to begin with” (p. 194).

Her observation emphasizes that the networks and communities we inherit are the product of intentional labour, creativity, and persistence. Remembering this history does not erase our isolation, but it reminds us that solidarity has always been something we make—one relationship at a time, through effort, care, and commitment.

Questions To Consider

How many in-person lesbian feminist friends do you have? How did you find them?
How many in-person lesbian friends do you have that don't share your politics? How do you navigate political differences?
What do you wish you could say to your lesbian friends who have differing politics? How do you wish they would receive it?
Some women spend a lot of time trying to recruit other lesbians to their worldview, do you find that worthwhile? What strategies do you find work best?
Do you feel like you have to live a double life to sustain social connections with different groups of women? What strategies do you employ?
Do you have any advice for lesbians who find themselves lonely or isolated?
Describe your ideal social support network or friendship group.