Let me preface this with the fact that I love straight girls of course only in the platonic sense now, as I have reformed. I have straight girls in all aspects of my life, my close friends, my family, my work colleagues. The number of straight women far surpasses the amount of lesbians that I spend time with. After spending such a long time pretending to be a straight girl there are still moments when being the only gay women in the room makes me feel different. Especially in comparison to spending time with my small group of lesbian friends.
In an environment where there are a lot of straight women around and the conversation inevitably turns to men, it can feel a tad awkward. Can I really have an opinion on whether Lucy should keep seeing her boring tinder date? Or give advice on how to get Sally’s husband to do something around the house other than play PlayStation on the weekend? Probably not because I honestly can’t relate… I have never lived with a man and have no idea whether this is normal behaviour for them or how to change it. Whether it be talking about dating men, their current husbands, or boyfriends, I tend to feel like the odd duck out.
Being the only lesbian amongst a group of straight women can put you in a weird place. A place where sometimes a general curiosity might take the form of a question you might have otherwise found offensive. Or an offhand comment that hurts you more than they would ever have realised. This is no one’s fault. If you have never walked a mile in someone else’s shoes sometimes you just don’t have the capacity to know what the right thing to ask or say is. There has to be some lenience on this front. If one of your straight friends, family members or colleagues says something that you find offensive, don’t be afraid to give them a quick but direct comment for why you didn’t like it and request that they don’t say it again. Usually if you are direct to someone, it will never happen again. If it does, well maybe at that point you have to find some new friends. Of course there is no excuse for downright rudeness or blatant homophobia but sometimes it can purely be a lack of education that is responsible for an ignorant comment.
Safe to say that most of the straight girls in your life will not be getting your L word jokes or your Lesbian Tik Tok references but it doesn’t matter. They are in your life for a reason. We can’t expect them to know everything about our world in the same we way we don’t understand everything about theirs. It’s a two way street so we need to be prepared to listen to them talk about their male dating problems, vent about the excessive PlayStation use and give advice when we can. If we can’t, then we just listen. We will never be able to hang around with other lesbians all day every day and personally, I wouldn’t want to. Having loads of different people of different races, genders, backgrounds and sexual orientation in your life opens you up to seeing so many different perspectives and learning so much more than just staying within your own community.