« Attempts in the 1970s to represent queer women's sexualities across media did more than simply ask their viewers to identify with their lesbian characters or celebrate the lives of particular identitarian subjects. While occasionally ontological, lesbian representation was also epistemological, interested not only in what "lesbian" was but also in thinking through what "lesbian" could do to divert and subvert patriarchy and heterosexism. More than mere negation, "becoming lesbian," for many feminists, precipitated "a welcome and joyful expansion of their sexual and emotional vocabularies." »