I was surprised to find that my earlier post about bi lesbians proved controversial, so here is a fuller explanation of why there is no such thing as a bi lesbian, and why the concept is actively harmful to both lesbians and bisexuals. As an aside, most of this analysis also applies to bisexual people who refer to themselves as gay or lesbian.
The word lesbian has a very specific meaning: a woman (aligned) person who exclusively experiences attraction to other woman (aligned) people. This is incompatible with being a man and with attraction to men. It is by definition, then, impossible to be a bi lesbian.
But this basic logic seems lost on some people. There are four kinds of motivation for self-identifying as a bi lesbian, but each of them are wrong.
First, a bisexual woman strongly identifies with lesbians and lesbian culture and wishes to associate herself with the term. She may also have no desire to have relationships with men, despite her attraction to them. This does not change the fact that she is bisexual and does not create a new category of identity. She is free to do all of this without adopting bi lesbian as her identity.
Second, a woman may believe that she experiences sexual (or romantic) attraction exclusively to women but also experiences romantic (or sexual) attraction to men. This concept is incoherent as I have explained in
this post. This kind of bi lesbian also, therefore, does not exist.
Third, a woman may be bisexual but have a strong preference for other women, and wish to signal this with the term bi lesbian. But having a preference does not change the fact that she is bisexual, and is a common occurrence among bisexuals. This is not a bi lesbian it is a normal bisexual woman.
There is, finally, an incoherent argument that claims that because lesbians can be attracted to non-binary people, the concept of a bi lesbian therefore can exist. But this is lesbophobic in the sense that it implies that “normal” lesbians are transphobic, and transphobic in the sense that it sets out woman aligned non-binary people as Other. It also fails to understand that “non-binary” is not a coherent class of gendered people, as each expression of gender is different within that category.
So now that we know there is no such thing as a bi lesbian, why is identifying as a bi lesbian actively harmful?
First, it harms lesbians because it furthers the narrative that lesbians just haven’t found the right man, and would not be lesbians if they allowed themselves to have sex with men. The creation of a new category of lesbians who do have sex with men calls into question what it means to be a lesbian and whether or not they are sexually unavailable to men. This is a major cause of harassment and violence against lesbians and increases instances of corrective rape. The freedom of some people to choose a label that they like should not come at the cost of harm to the people from whom they are appropriating the label in the first place.
Second, it contributes to bi erasure. The refusal of some bisexual people to properly describe their sexuality means that other bisexuals are harmed due to confusion and incorrect information being spread about their sexuality. Ironically, it is often these self-same bi lesbians or bisexuals who call themselves lesbian or gay who most often complain about bi erasure in the first place.
So, therefore, there is no such thing as a bi lesbian and identifying as one actively harms both lesbians and bisexuals.