In its current incarnation, political lesbianism is about viewing one's sexual orientation as a conscious decision, writes Phoebe Maltz Bovy.ANTON VAGANOV/Reuters

Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail. She is the author of the forthcoming book The Last Straight Woman: On Desiring Men.

The British feminist Julie Bindel recently published a book called Lesbians: Where Are We Now? If you’re at all familiar with British feminism, you might think that Lesbians consists of Ms. Bindel rejecting mainstream LGBTQ beliefs. You might guess that she rejects the idea that transgender women can be lesbians, and that she looks unfavourably on once-lesbian-identified people transitioning. And yes, that’s all in there. But what surprised me was how incredibly on the same page Ms. Bindel is with the most of-the-moment progressive ideology where female sexuality is concerned.

In Lesbians and elsewhere, it’s fashionable to say that all currently straight-identified women have the potential to switch teams: “Women can, understandably, be very defensive about their sexual desires, and of course some might have no romantic or sexual interest in women at all,” she writes. What jumped out at me here was “might.” Ms. Bindel is careful to write, moments later, that she does not believe “every single woman is a latent lesbian,” but she has just presented female heterosexuality as something that “might” exist. In an essay promoting Lesbians, Ms. Bindel writes that she “believes any woman, in the right circumstances, meeting the right person, and being in the right frame of mind, could choose to embark on a sexual relationship with another woman, whether or not she has previously only had relationships with men.” This is certainly true of some women, but that “any” seems a tad like overkill.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Young women are increasingly identifying as bisexual, but what does that mean?

Political lesbianism, in its current incarnation at least, is about viewing one’s sexual orientation as a conscious decision, an anti-patriarchal walking of the walk. It’s embraced by women like Ms. Bindel and others who share some of her........

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