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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.
How I realised I was into girls: Part 2
As I kissed Amie and my shoulders brushed against the walls on either side of me, I sighed internally and thought, “Am I destined to always kiss girls in toilet cubicles?” When I sat next to her boyfriend and stroked her hand behind his back I contemplated, “Will I always be the other woman?” And later, when confronted about it I wondered, “Is this something I’ll have to lie about my whole life?”
I have to admit, I’ve kissed a few girls in the toilets of bars and pubs. It’s not like I have a fetish for it, it’s just, well, there always seemed to be an element of secrecy involved. Some of them had boyfriends, but more often they were just…straight. Or bicurious. Or whatever you want to call it. Which means that kissing in public was usually a no-no, unless it was for the benefit of leering boys. And in that case I’ll take the toilet cubicle thanks.
The reality is that these days many girls seem happy to ‘lez it up’ if they know there’s a male getting off on it. But they’re less willing to voluntarily kiss a girl in public if it will be seen as a serious attraction with no space for male participation.
However, whether you want it or not there will always be male participation when guys are looking, because through the act of looking they’re subjecting women to the power play of the male gaze. When a guy imposes an unwanted gaze upon a female, he is perpetuating the tradition of males as active viewers and females as passive, there to be looked at. But worse, when women welcome this gaze through exhibitionism, like the party skanks pashing for boys, they’re voluntarily reducing themselves to objects of male desire. Or in other words, ew yuck, put it away. With this type of straight girl experimentation going on, it’s easy to see why “true” bisexual people get a hard time. They’re lumped together as the attention seekers, the flirts and the cheats. And sadly I’ve heard the old “It’s not cheating because you’re a girl” far too often, which shows that those attitudes are still out there making the image of bisexuality worse.
This is continued on through movies and television – those rare times we see a bisexual on the screen she’s represented as characters like the murderous Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, or Mischa Barton having a gratuitous lesbian fling in The OC. And even though I love the happy lesbian ending in Imagine Me and You with Piper Perabo, I can’t forget that her character cheats on her husband along the way.
If bisexuals weren’t already getting a hard enough time because of the party pashers and media stereotyping, the lesbians then jump in to give them a you’re-not-gay bash. Many lesbians won’t date bisexual girls, which I assume is partly because of the fear that they’ll become the prolonged experiment of a girl who will eventually go back to men. Because in the end men have a physicality that we lack – so if you’re into it, you’ll eventually miss it, right?
This discrimination saddens me, because out of all people, lesbians should know what it’s like to not be accepted for loving differently. However, I can appreciate their initial suspicion when they meet a bisexual girl because everyone seems to be slapping themselves with that label these days. And subsequently, in this age of experimentation, most lesbians will have their hearts trampled by a curious straight girl at some point. It’s practically a lesbian rite of passage.
So what does it really mean to be bisexual then? Can you be bisexual without ever having kissed a girl? Of course, or else how could you claim to be straight if you’ve never kissed a boy? It’s my belief that, in spite of accusations of being ‘fence sitters’, bisexuals have perhaps even more of a hard time than self-declared lesbians. The definition of bisexuality is so slippery and misrepresented that it takes strong character to happily float somewhere between the binaries of ‘straight’ and ‘gay’. Which is perhaps why so many girls come out as bisexual for a stage before they move on and identify as a lesbian.
When I came out it made for an easier transition to say I was bisexual first. That way I wasn’t rejecting the ideology of man-woman outright, but I could test the waters of homosexuality. And if people dismissed me as just another girl experimenting, it was ok because I needed all the time I could get before I was able to call myself a lesbian. I needed to become comfortable with the idea of a “new” me.
Being comfortable with yourself first is the most important thing you can do before you start coming out to others. Because coming out doesn’t just happen once, it happens with every new person or situation. Each time you must decide whether it’s worth telling people, if you’ll hide it, or if you’ll just let it become obvious slowly – and you have to be prepared to face the consequences of people’s reactions.
Now that I’m out I wouldn’t change my sexuality for anything, despite the challenges I’ve faced because of it. I’ve been a straight girl’s exotic lesbian fling, had many unrequited girl crushes, and yes, I’ve been the other woman. Not all are things I’m proud of, but I see them as my crazy adolescence – I just started a few years later than most. And although a toilet cubicle isn’t the most romantic setting, nor do I want to have to kiss girls behind closed doors any more; I must admit, I’ve had some fun along the way.
In my next column: I talk about picking up girls in bars and hope I don’t get in trouble with my girlfriend.
‘Til then,
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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being a gay nzgirl.
This discrimination saddens me, because out of all people, lesbians should know what it’s like to not be accepted for loving differently. However, I can appreciate their initial suspicion when they meet a bisexual girl because everyone seems to be slapping themselves with that label these days. And subsequently, in this age of experimentation, most lesbians will have their hearts trampled by a curious straight girl at some point. It’s practically a lesbian rite of passage.
Being comfortable with yourself first is the most important thing you can do before you start coming out to others. Because coming out doesn’t just happen once, it happens with every new person or situation. Each time you must decide whether it’s worth telling people, if you’ll hide it, or if you’ll just let it become obvious slowly – and you have to be prepared to face the consequences of people’s reactions.