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Lil Cameron is going to be writing a regular column, sharing her perspective of being a gay nzgirl.
It’s been three years since 22-year-old Lil came out and, despite some minor hiccups, she’s never looked back. She hopes by sharing her experiences she’ll help anyone else questioning their sexuality.
Plus, she gets so many questions from straight girls about what it’s like to be gay that she figured she may as well start a column and save them the trouble!
Got a question or comment for Lil? Hit the button below to ask her. Questions may appear on the site (don't worry we won't use your name!) but if you're not comfortable with that just request that it's not published.
Fitting in with the lesbian clique, Part 1
“See this?” she boomed across the lecture theatre, tapping the bottle of chocolate milk on the projection screen with a dangerous looking pointer.
“The bottle in this ad is not placed there innocently, oh no”, she continued with raised eyebrows and a strange gleam in her eye. “This bottle is a phallic symbol. It represents…the male penis!” She paused dramatically and glared at the hundred or so first year students in the lecture theatre. We just sat there like stunned mullets, avoiding eye contact. “Furthermore, it is milk. Chocolate milk. Hey? Get it? Spurting…” I didn’t get it at all. All I knew was that she was a big scary dyke masquerading as my communications lecturer, and I was a little bit frightened. In fact, now that I think about it she looked like a phallic symbol herself – squat, fleshy, and with a wholly unattractive helmet haircut.
Back then I was a wide-eyed 17 year-old who had grown up in conservative Christchurch and just moved to Dunedin after seven years at a private girls’ school. Since then I’ve come out and been exposed to a lot of different types of people, but when I think back to those days I can understand how some people feel intimidated by lesbians. I certainly did when I first started peeking my head out of the closet. Well, in reality it felt more like going through the back of the wardrobe and entering the strange and unfamiliar land of Narnia.
On my first foray into the lesbian world, I walked out of my hockey break-up dinner early, deflecting questions from my teammates. And I walked in, late, to a room full of lesbians who all turned to look at me, standing in the doorway dressed in black tights with a red tutu, and with garish red lipstick on. There was a pause and you could see them trying to decide whether I dressed like this all the time (you must never be surprised by lesbian fashion choices), before I took a deep breath and said, “Hi, I’m Lil. Sorry I’m late, I’ve been at a dress-up dinner.”
I count that as one of the bravest moments of my life. I’d been making myself sick with anxiety over the previous six months, with the growing realisation that this attraction to girls wasn’t a passing thing. That kissing a girl would always mean more to me than just a way to tantalise the boys. So at the age of 19, amongst the heterosexual hype of Otago University, I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself, and to take action. That’s how I ended up walking into a coming out group for girls under 25, dressed in my regional colours with a delightful ‘80s twist.
Because it was a coming out group, everyone was very friendly. Yet I was dismayed to find that everyone also fitted the lesbian clichés I had in my mind. There was short hair, red hair, baggy clothes, no make up, piercings, troubled families, teenage pregnancies, film students, gender studies students, artists. This was supposed to be the place where I found the people that fit the other half of me. The part of me that was different to all my university friends – who counted bringing a rugby player home as the ultimate trophy. Yet it began to sink in that I didn’t quite fit in here either. I kept going to the group, because it was the first and only place where I could be completely truthful about myself. And although I was very different from those girls, I grew to respect them for the things they had faced merely because they loved differently than the majority of the population. So far, taking a deep breath and swinging open that closet door had been nothing but rewarding.
The first big test came when the monthly queer night rolled around at the uni pub. Once again I found myself walking into a room full of gay people, alone. This time I was wearing my normal clothes, and was stopped by the bouncer. “You do know what this is, don’t you?” he said, looking around suspiciously. “Um, yep”, I replied nervously, and he let me pass with a ‘Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you’ look on his face. Later, when I had made friends with some of the girls there, they told me it was because I looked too straight. Too straight? First I wasn’t straight enough, and then I was too straight?
The realities of gay bars are quite different to what people seem to think. I thought I would be embraced into the weird and wacky gay family, where everyone formed a united front against all those who seek to alienate and discriminate. Or I thought that I’d at least get hit on, I mean c’mon, I was fresh meat! But in fact I often felt more alienated and discriminated against at those queer events than I ever had in the straight world.
As a generalisation, lesbians are a cliquey group. Every lesbian subculture I’ve been exposed to has had an in-crowd who all know each other (often because they’ve all slept with each other), and they’re suspicious of outsiders. And an outsider I certainly was, mainly because of my appearance. In their eyes I was just a straight girl in a skirt and heels, with make-up on and long blonde hair. To this day, I’ve only ever been hit on once in a gay bar. I just don’t seem to be attractive to lesbians, goddamn it!
However, that wasn’t enough to put me off. I’d made the first steps in the coming out process and there was no turning back. Plus, those gay nights were opening my eyes to a new world, even if I wasn’t in the cool crowd. There were flamboyant drag queens – endlessly colourful – and acoustic nights where I heard a girl singing about another girl for the first time. My life had taken a direction I’d never expected it to, and I drank it all in.
How I eventually made it into the lesbian clique is a story for the next column. But let’s just say it involves a soccer team, hairy armpits, and hooking up with the scariest lesbian of them all...
Lil
You may read this and identify with some of the feelings I had in my early gay days. If so, you don’t have to deal with it alone. Most cities in New Zealand have organisations set up to help you with the coming out process, or if you just want a chat. You should also have a queer group at your university if you’re a student. Rainbow Youth,Auckland’s young gay and lesbian support organisation are really nice and will be able to give you the contact details for your nearest support group. www.rainbowyouth.org.nz
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sharing her perspective of being a gay nzgirl.
Back then I was a wide-eyed 17 year-old who had grown up in conservative Christchurch and just moved to Dunedin after seven years at a private girls’ school. Since then I’ve come out and been exposed to a lot of different types of people, but when I think back to those days I can understand how some people feel intimidated by lesbians. I certainly did when I first started peeking my head out of the closet. Well, in reality it felt more like going through the back of the wardrobe and entering the strange and unfamiliar land of Narnia.
I count that as one of the bravest moments of my life. I’d been making myself sick with anxiety over the previous six months, with the growing realisation that this attraction to girls wasn’t a passing thing. That kissing a girl would always mean more to me than just a way to tantalise the boys. So at the age of 19, amongst the heterosexual hype of Otago University, I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself, and to take action. That’s how I ended up walking into a coming out group for girls under 25, dressed in my regional colours with a 
The realities of gay bars are quite different to what people seem to think. I thought I would be embraced into the weird and wacky gay family, where everyone formed a united front against all those who seek to alienate and discriminate. Or I thought that I’d at least get hit on, I mean c’mon, I was fresh meat! But in fact I often felt more alienated and discriminated against at those queer events than I ever had in the straight world. 