April 20th marks the start of Lesbian Visibility Week (LVW) which for 2026 has the theme of Health and Wellbeing. LVW was founded in 2020 by Linda Riley as an expansion from Lesbian Visibility Day (April 26th), which has been celebrated since 2008. The week is intended to highlight lesbian voices, experiences, and challenges within the LGBTQ+ community, which often suffered from underrepresentation. You can find out more about LVW and events taking place here.
But why is lesbian visibility important, and why are we still grouping people based on their identity?
Celebration of lesbian identity serves to combat the erasure of queer women, challenge harmful stereotypes, and combat double discrimination based on both gender and sexual orientation. Providing different opportunities to reflect the variety of orientations that exist helps those who want to define what they are feeling find the language to do so, and for many queer women, it is the term lesbian that they have greatest affinity to. Most importantly, representation matters and telling a variety of stories from lesbian perspectives helps to challenge the prevailing stereotype that lesbians are either mad, bad or sad. Seeing visible lesbians in media and public life helps others, especially young people, imagine a positive future for themselves.
We know from the 2022 UKIE census that the UK gaming industry is an incredibly queer place to work, with 24% of respondents identifying themselves as something other than heterosexual, however we can also see that women in general are not fully represented, making up just 30% of respondents. This means we need to be mindful that we are not overlooking the experience of the lesbians in our midst.
So to all the incredible lesbians out there - be proud, be visible and be you! And to all the allies and those who are keen to learn more about the lesbian lived experience, you can get started with some additional resources listed below.
We are always happy to hear from you, so please get in touch with us at leadership@outmaking.games, or join us over on our Discord.
Jasmin Fox - Out Making Games
Lesbian Visibility Week - https://www.lesbianvisibilityweek.com
Events - https://www.lesbianvisibilityweek.com/lvw-events-2026
Stonewall Lesbian Hub - https://www.stonewall.org.uk/resources/lgbtq-hubs/lesbian-hub
akt Lesbian Resources - https://www.akt.org.uk/resources/lesbian-resources/
DIVA magazine - https://diva-magazine.com/
