Pop icon Chappell Roan is singing songs about the nuances of sapphic sex. Reality TV royalty JoJo Siwa is speaking candidly about gender identity in the Celebrity Big Brother house. Mean Girls star Reneé Rapp is posing for paparazzi at Paris Fashion Week wearing a ring that says “DYKE”. Queer women have never been cooler. And it’s about time.

There is so much unapologetic sapphic representation right now and I love to see it. Performers from Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo to Baby Reindeer’s Jessica Gunning are proudly owning their queer sexuality. Our screens are filled with inclusive, must-watch shows like Heartstopper and I Kissed A Girl. Lesbian nightlife is booming too, with a flurry of events called things like WET, Lezzer Fest and Magic Dyke. It is truly an exciting time to be sapphic and the community is rejoicing over this long-awaited lesbian renaissance.

It could not be more different from the world I grew up in. The same year I started nursery the government introduced Section 28, the UK law that banned “the promotion of homosexuality” by local authorities, making it literally illegal for teachers to say anything good about gay people. It wasn’t repealed until just after I left sixth form (a timeline I can’t help taking personally). As a teenager the only lesbian I had heard of was Sandi Toksvig. When she came out publicly in 1994, she received death threats so credible she had to take her family into hiding. The World Health Organisation only declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1993. Although I was privately kissing girls from the age of 13, I didn’t come out until I was in my twenties. For so long, “lesbian” was a word I resisted. My identity was drenched in secrecy and shame.

Flash forward to the present day and not only am I out, but I’m also editor-in-chief of DIVA, the world’s leading magazine for LGBTQIA+ women and non-binary people, and the author of What A Girl Wants: A (True) Story Of Sexuality And Self-discovery. I am what you might call a professional lesbian. I lesbian for a living. To clarify, I also lesbian in my free time. Thrillingly, I am finally living in a world where lesbians are front and centre. After a lifetime of being othered, this feels powerful and poignant to me. And I’m not the only one.

Through my work at DIVA, I can feel the buzz in my community. There is no doubt that this explosion of representation is validating and joyful. But there is also no doubt that there is still a hell of a long way to go until we have true equality.

As we head into Lesbian Visibility Week, there are a lot of reasons to be jubilant (Chappell Roan’s latest hit single, The Giver, being one). But there are also a multitude of inequalities that urgently need to be addressed. While I can’t speak for all LGBTQIA+ people, I can share some of the issues that I, and DIVA’s readers, are especially concerned about.

We are worried about our safety. According to the Office for National Statistics, homophobic hate crime has increased 112% in the last five years. We are alarmed that, despite the government’s promise last July to ban so-called conversion “therapy”, it is still legal in the UK today. We are deeply troubled at escalating attacks on our trans siblings. We are also frustrated at the continued lack of equitable access to IVF for queer couples wanting to start a family. That’s why, as part of the Fertility Justice working group, DIVA is campaigning for #IVFForAll.

When we look at the wider world, we see that queer rights are being rolled back on a global scale, from Trump’s anti-queer and anti-trans agenda, to the recent recriminalisation of gay sex in Trinidad and Tobago. Sometimes it feels like the more visible we become, the more furious the backlash grows.
I do not say these things to depress you or make you despair at how bleak things seem. I say them because they are true and pressing. Just because we’re in fashion, it doesn’t mean everything’s fixed. But while it’s important to be aware of the many challenges we face and call for much-needed change, it is also important to be hopeful about the future.

So what do lesbians really want this Lesbian Visibility Week? We absolutely want a thriving nightlife scene, out A-listers on the red carpet and uplifting music centring women-loving-women. We also want exactly the same things that everybody wants: to feel safe and seen, to have equal rights in law and equal treatment in society, to be able to simply be who we are and live our lives in peace. Now that would be cool.

What A Girl Wants: A (True) Story Of Sexuality And Self-discovery by Roxy Bourdillon is published by Bluebird, Pan Macmillan and out now