In a recent interview, out actor-comic
Lea DeLaria said that she believes it's important for her to be
visible as a “butch lesbian.”
DeLaria, 59, is best known for playing
inmate Carrie “Big Boo” Black on the Netflix dramedy Orange is
the New Black.
DeLaria is currently helping to promote
a series of LGBT themed movies being broadcast in the month of June
on streaming film service FilmStruck. On June 22, DeLaria will guide
viewers as FilmStruck presents seven lesbian themed films, including
The Watermelon Woman, Desert Hearts and Blue Is the
Warmest Color.
“I loved that we were telling our
stories for the first time,” DeLaria told The Advocate about
watching The Watermelon Woman, the first feature film directed
by a black lesbian. “When I saw the change that was happening,
that we were starting to tell our own stories, that was like, fuck
yeah! This was not The Killing of Sister George, you know what
I mean? This was The Watermelon Woman. And the fact that it
was about black lesbians was just like, fuck yeah! So good. So cool.”
She added that she'd “love to make a
lesbian rom-com.” “That's just something I've never seen,”
DeLaria
said.
The comic also said that she believes
it's important for her to be visible as a butch lesbian.
“I think it's very important for me
to be visible as butch because butch is not the same as any other
lesbian,” she said. “When we start to forget that there are
other kinds of us out there, that's not a good thing.”
“I need people to recognize, 'Yes,
I'm a lesbian, but I'm a butch,'” DeLaria said.
(Related: Lea
DeLaria encourages everyone to “stand tall against homophobic pig”
Trump.)