thelesbianlifestyle.com

I have been living the life a young, metropolitan gay girl about town for the past four years, and I was recently approached by a high profile journalist writing a deeply ignorant article for a vile little paper called the Daily Mail on ‘Lipstick’ lesbians, under which Sapphic term I apparently qualify (why thank you, I was wondering which sticker I should be wearing). The article itself, to which I thankfully paid no contribution, talked of an impending lesbian ‘epidemic’ that is sweeping the nation, targeting good, middle class girls of respectable families and infecting them with the shocking and destructive desire to kiss each other. Forget Swine Flu. Forget Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, Syphilis, HIV and all other minor ailments connected with unprotected sex. Girls are going out onto our streets and kissing other girls! Good God, pretty soon we’ll have a strain of Lesbianism that is beyond all cure and the muff hungry will turn our streets into ’28 Gays Later’.

I don’t want to bang endlessly on about the article because it doesn’t deserve that much attention, unworthy, as it is to clean up dog turd. But it did get me thinking on the social evolution of homosexuality, particularly for lesbians. I would campaign that London is the Lesbian capital of the world, yet we are still a massively unrepresented society in comparison to the male scene.

What the article did point particularly to, is the recent popularity of ‘lipstick lesbians’ amongst celebrity. It is so ridiculousy misguided. So Katie Perry kissed a girl and liked it? Well Katie, I kissed a girl, got her drunk, took her home, made mad passionate love to her, and two years on we live together in a lovely flat in South London. I liked it, she liked it, and we don’t give a toss whether the Daily Mail liked it. So why is nobody taking my photo and having controversial words about my influence on poor, erroneous young teenage girls? Admittedly I have the singing voice of a drunk spaniel and no publicity manager but aside from that?

It’s because of just that. No one sees what I’m doing, and because they find it unfathomable that lesbians come in any shape and size other than tattooed, heavily pierced and dungaree clad butch woman (no criticism ladies, I am just making a particular point here), they would never imagine that someone like me would be so naturally deviant. No, all lesbians must look a particular way so that the (largely middle-class) majority feel safe. Lesbians are zoo animals, keep them in their cage and what ever you do don’t feed them Lindsay.

Hats off of course to Beth Ditto for speaking out, but let’s be honest. If Beth was a size eight, pin-up from The OC something tells me she would have been hailed as the lesbian Beelzibub. Listen, if you think us aberrant, then it doesn’t matter if I am a skinhead wearing leathers or dancing around in a tutu. If you are going to be bigoted at least be accurate. We are all the same. We all like muff. And theatre.

The very fact that the term ‘lipstick lesbian’ in the Daily Mail definition actually means an attention-seeking drunk, straight girl who struts around giving embarrassingly unaccomplished snogs to girls of equal nature sums it all up really. It’s beyond measure to think that someone can look like your average girl as well as sleep with them. Unless of course they have been misled by Madonna, Britney and a bottle of Lambrini (yes they actually used the ‘depraved’ Britney/Madonna snog that occurred before most of these ‘corrupted’ girls had moved onto solids).

Is it because of this attitude that so many gorgeous, gay women are still finding it so difficult to reveal their sexuality in environments outside the scene? Because we don’t look like the stereotype we push people out of their comfort zone. We can’t be gay. We don’t look it. Perhaps we had a bad experience with men? Well yes actually, in so much as we don’t fancy them, and many of them think we are born fodder for their ultimate sexual triumph (sorry to generalize, but I’m being honest). And don’t even get me started on ‘what a waste’.

Take the two guys who sparked up a conversation with my girlfriend and I whilst we enjoyed a leisurely drink the other weekend. The conversation reached the point of inevitable revelation (something we are used to and neither force nor hide). The reaction? Once they’d stopped dribbling one of them said ‘I suppose I should just take myself off then’, before proceeding to plant a kiss on my girlfriends lips. Luckily, I did not see this, or we certainly would have seen evidence of my butch (or perhaps criminal) side. I’m not expecting this reaction never to come from (in this case) horny desperate men from IT – that would make me deeply ignorant. I would just like things to evolve to a stage where they acknowledge that is actually possible for two feminine girls to be madly in love with each other, as opposed to feigning it as a cock tease. And thus treat us with some damned respect. If I had been a guy this prick would never have dared behave in this way for fear of carrying his balls home in his mouth.

I certainly am not trying to declare that all straight people self combust with confusion. But they are surprised. I am lucky to live in an actors world where you can shag man, woman or beast and no one bats an eyelid, but in the wider world acceptance on this scale simply doesn’t exist. I am not campaigning bestiality, but there is a general ignorance that needs to change if society is going to realise that being a gay woman is not a mishap in genetics or the results of a troubled childhood. We come in all shapes and sizes. We are everywhere. And we are not coming to get your nice, middle-class daughters. I think you’ll find that they are coming to us.