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Opinion How to make lesbians cool (and inclusive) again Lesbian bars were supposed to be the one place where, just by entering the room, my queerness was undeniable.
It’s bad enough that feminine-looking women are so often mistaken for straight women, a phenomenon known as femme invisibility. Coming to the bar to flirt with girls and trans guys, I didn’t want to have to feel the eyes of a straight man on me all night. Though some bars refused to let them in, other lesbian bars simply charged male patrons high door fees to make them pay for the privilege of gawking and stalking.Īs a young femme dyke with long hair and painted fingernails, I hated having to navigate these encounters in what were supposed to be rare safe spaces. Back in the bar days, men who hung around lesbian bars were referred to as “sharks” because of the way they seemed to circle drunk or lonely prey. Encountering men and straight-ish couples in lesbian spaces is an all-too-familiar experience for me. I’m in my 40s, which means I spent a good part of my youth in the lesbian bars of the U.S. With all of these settings carefully selected, I figured I was in the clear. In settings, I was asked whether I wanted to be shown women, men, or everyone (I chose women, and clicked a button that said “show me people of the same orientation first” in order to hopefully weed out straight women and get right to my fellow queers). I reached a mildly confusing page that allowed me to pick a second gender identity (non-binary) and asked whether I wanted to be included in searches for men or women (I chose women). While creating a new account, the app asked me to choose a gender (male or female were the only options and I chose female) and a sexual orientation (you could pick three I went with lesbian, queer, and gay). This was the only way to be absolutely sure I’d checked off all the settings properly, to rule out any mistakes on my end. In July, I deleted my Tinder account and signed back up on the platform for an entirely fresh start. Being a generally curious journalist, I set out to solve the mystery.