Unveiling Herstory — Navigating the Unique Terrain of Dating as a Queer Woman
Gauging interest, the question of who takes the lead, and femme invisibility all contribute to a less straightforward road towards romance
I was 20, talking to a cute girl outside Borders while a vociferous menagerie hummed inside me. My heart thundered like the stampedes in The Lion King. Butterflies flapped insistently in my stomach, spelling out the message, “You have a giant crush,” with their fluttering wings.
I didn’t know how this girl felt about me, though — and wouldn’t until our mutual friend shoved us together at a queer dance party a couple months later. (As I repeated a series of sheepish apologies, I realized my arms had wrapped around her instinctively). A kiss followed, and we dated for several months from that night on.
Getting there took time, as I’d gotten few vibes of romantic interest before then. Without our friend’s help, I might have assumed she wasn’t interested — and moved on.
This ambiguity was one uncomfortable aspect of dating as a queer femme in my late teens and early to mid 20s. This girl wasn’t the exception, but the pattern. The question of gauging interest and deciding who takes the lead is a common one for young queer women, complicated by heteronormativity and gendered socialization. I wasn’t used to pursuing, nor did any girls my age model the behavior for me.
Here is some further exploration of this, as well as other contributors that complicate dating for younger queer women.
Lack of clarity over whether the person is even queer and / or likes you in more than a friendly way!
I was 23 and living in Uruguay when I met Jimena through a Couchsurfing group. I’d noticed that the “Interested In” section on her Facebook page listed “men and women.”
We began hanging out. The fact that we were both expats, albeit from markedly distinct cultures, gave us an automatic commonality. She seemed cool and sophisticated, yet also vulnerable and accessible. I found her Spanish accent charming. I loved our talks about male chauvinism, globalization, and social-emotional learning. It didn’t take long for a crush to develop.
As we sipped Fernet cokes at a bar one night, talk turned to a guy she was romantically interested in.
“We were at a party the other night, and he almost completely ignored me,” she said, staring down with sad eyes into the candle flickering next to her drink.
My heart sank — both for her, and from the realization that I’d misconstrued the situation. That our friendship probably wasn’t building up to any great romance; that Jimena likely would never see me as anything more than a friend.
When I shared my feelings with her, this is the response she sent me (translated from our correspondence in Spanish):
“Hi Eleni — the truth is I wasn’t expecting this at all. I didn’t know you liked women, nor that you liked me. For me that’s not a problem, the fact that you like me, but more difficult for you because I’m heterosexual, or that is to say…completely incompatible.”
Regarding the “interested in men and women” or her Facebook profile: she explained she was “of course interested in men and women,” because for [her] “Facebook isn’t a place to find a romantic partner.”’
Yes, complete cringe moment.
Sexuality is invisible, especially if you’re a woman displaying no outward signs of queerness. Common questions I found myself asking through my late teens and twenties included:
Was the waitress at iHop who put hearts on my receipt flirting, or just trying to get a tip?
Was that “like” on my Facebook selfie from that girl I just met through a friend and whom I barely know flirtatious or platonic?
If a woman is nice to me, is it because she’s interested in me or because women are socialized to be nice? How do you meet women to date when you don’t “look gay?”
Role ambiguity in the courting process.
I possess a mix of masculine and feminine traits. Still, I’m read by the world as “femme.” And because I’m attracted to women with more feminine energy and appearance, I’ve always felt like this mismatch between who I’m attracted to and who tends to be attracted to me contributed to some difficulty.
Never did I feel like it was pulling teeth to attract guys. I’m by no means trying to conceitedly suggest that I got every guy out there;I didn’t. But I could feel their attention at parties or elsewhere out in public, picking up on it the way you just intuitively know when someone is attracted to you. With them I was more able to lean back into — and trust in the wisdom of— Someone will come to you when you stop seeking and pursuing.
Noticing this had me considering taking on a more “masculine” role over the years. Back in the 1950s, at bars it was implied that the butch would approach the femme, while the femme was to wait for the butch. Many even had separate bathrooms for the separate “sub-categories” of women. It was taboo for butches to be attracted to one another, or for femmes to date.
These roles no longer exist so overtly, but they also haven’t altogether fallen away. As a commenter on a YouTube video wrote that for her, “relationships [with women] never get anywhere, unless [she does] what [she doesn’t] particularly like, which is leading in how things go. Lol.”
I once read somewhere, “My belief is that if you have to be the aggressor, if you have to pursue, if you have to do the asking out, nine times out of 10, he’s just not that into you.”
I immediately wondered how it applied to queer relationships. Though I don’t want to come across as overly-eager or misread signs of disinterest, I also know that someone has to be the pursuer. If both people are femmes, who is the “desperate one” for putting herself out there?
According to this conventional wisdom, either one of them would be.
Smaller pool breeds greater scarcity.
Scarcity isn’t just a mindset for us but a literal reality, considering there are fewer of us. Generally, I’m attracted to women with warm or nurturing energies, paired with an inquiring mind to challenge me intellectually. Kind hearts, emotional depth, empathy, sensitivity, and gentleness— all this attracts me. And I’ve found these qualities frustratingly hard to come by in the women seeking women playing field.
When your options are scarce you’re more willing to make exceptions for partners who embody the qualities you’re seeking but may not be meeting your needs. It’s easier to let go when you know the next viable prospect is just one swipe away. Or seated next to you on the bus. Or in line at the coffee shop. Or waiting to be introduced by one of your mutual friends.
Dating “curious” women or newbies with internalized homophobia.
People of all sexual orientations can relate to the scenario of sensing commitment wariness from the person they’re dating, or the person not being ready. But there’s a particular brand of hurt that results when the hesitance from the person you’re dating mixes in with possible questions of internalized homophobia, shame, and inner struggles on that person’s part.
I met a girl one summer in my mid 20s who, on our first date, told me she’d never dated a woman before but said she’d have “no problem telling her friends and family if she were to.”
In the two months we dated, we shared plates at a food truck festival, where honey-colored leaves beautified streets lined with Victorian houses; held hands in the “party Lyft” driven by a fun older butch lesbian; kissed in hot tubs, beneath the strobe lights of gay clubs, under / below a starry night sky at the entrance to her parents’ castle-like home. We gave each other gifts and poems. Held hands nearly everywhere we went. While laying next to me she’d say things like, “thought you should know that I’m really starting to like you.”
In the days after she relocated to school down south, she and I kept in frequent, flirty text contact. After about a week though, her tone changed. The texts got shorter. Stark and robotic responses replaced the “I miss you’s” and “Wish you were here’s.”
At first tried to deny the shift, or that it meant anything. I told myself maybe I was just imagining it. But days later an “MCM” post of her ex-boyfriend showed up on my Instagram feed. Seeing that came down over my heart like a bucket of bricks.
What hurt about situations like these was being unable to tell if it was me they were rejecting, or my gender. I wondered if some were attempting to date women while their body remained (mostly) in the hetero pool — with only one pinky in the queer tub (which makes for an unbalanced situation when the other person’s entire body is fully submerged, and has been for years).
In other words it was hard to know who was actually looking for real commitment with another woman.
Other queer women I’ve spoken with, particularly ones who came out young, have had similar experiences. And though I once tried to give the benefit of the doubt, I’ve found there are consequences when one woman is out while the other is still closeted or completely new to the queer dating world.
The 2020 film Happiest Season depicted the harm this type of relationship can inflict on a partner who’s out. Keegan Williams described it in Out Front as “essentially Kristen Stewart’s character being emotionally abused, gaslit, and pushed back into the closet for 90 minutes because her partner’s parents are right-of-center.”
My college girlfriend introduced me as a friend to her family or friends from back home, even after we’d been dating for several months (and all our friends at school knew of us as a couple). And it drilled a small hole in my heart.
That brings me to my next point…
Encountering biphobia on dates.
Tepid, closeted, and apprehensive dating of a mostly straight woman is different than genuine bisexuality. This identity is 100 percent valid, and yet bisexual women encounter hesitance and judgment from lesbians like me who have been injured by behavior like what I just described.
It can feel like an unfair onus for a bisexual woman who’s new to the queer dating world — that any hesitation on her part could be interpreted as internalized homophobia or preference for men.
What if a woman and I just didn’t connect? I can imagine them thinking.
It’s frustrating to know that if I were to ever break things off, the lesbian would just assume it’s because I haven’t accepted my sexuality. That’s a lot of weight to carry. It’s an onus I didn’t ask for.
Some lesbians won’t even give them a chance, treating them like a red flag from the get-go – not because of their actual character or capacity for commitment, but because of their sexual identity and past behavior.
It’s unfortunate because ultimately qualities like attachment style, honesty, self-awareness, and emotional availability matter more than anything else and are more determinant of relational success than one’s sexual orientation.
Sexualization and unwanted attention from straight men.
My 22-year-old self and the woman I was on a date with were sipping blueberry vodka lemonades at a cozy booth inside a San Francisco bar. Cat quirks and film portrayals of existential crises were among our topics of conversation. I found the girl extremely cute — and was excited to continue getting to know her.
A few minutes into our conversation though, two guys sat down unprompted on either side of us. Unable to tell if my date minded their presence , and not wanting to risk coming across as “the angry lesbian” to a person I hardly knew, I said nothing.
Eventually we moved to another bar — only for the situation to repeat. By the end it felt like the evening, in little pieces at a time, had been hijacked.
I was young then, and have become more assertive with age. I don’t imagine anything quite this comically egregious transpiring at the age I’m at now. Still, as a post on AfterEllen.com put it, “Lesbian couples are never alone. We are subject to unwanted participants, whom we are supposed to laugh off or pretend not to hear.”
One evening back in college I sat with my head against my girlfriend’s shoulder on a bench outside a bar. Suddenly I heard a click. A guy yelled “Sweet!” By the time I’d processed that he’d just snapped a picture of us with his phone, he and his four laughing friends had already run off.
Another time (at a gay club of all places), a man requested a kiss from me and the girl I was dancing with. Still another man, after a woman and I informed him we were on a date, responded with, “I don’t have a problem with that” —while remaining at our side. His face was so close I could smell beer on his breath.
I wish there were some sort of agreed-upon sign that women and I could place on our table. A tall glass unicorn, maybe. Or a rainbow-striped cat. Really anything to communicate “Date happening, please do not disturb” — similar to the way some place a cowboy hat on their bedroom doorknob to signal when they’e in the act (*then again, some men might take that as an invitation).
There’s always the risk that this annoying but seemingly benign behavior could escalate into more. One night for instance, a man followed my date and me out the bar and continued trailing for several blocks. I remember feeling deeply unsettled, since we were both short women (under “5.4”). It was late and neither of us had pepper spray.
“I know this is new to you, but I’ve dated a lot of women. This is just par for the course. This is the risk you’re taking,” Carmen Maria Machado’s lover tells her in In The Dream House, after fighting off a drunk man on the street who’d nearly accosted them.
Fetishization on the dating apps.
Like other minorities, we queer women are sometimes viewed as fetishes and porn objects more than as complex humans with our own agency. The main way I’ve experienced this is through couples on the apps looking for threesomes in a, let’s just say not altogether tactful or respectful way.
Every threesome request I’ve opened over the years has brought reminders of the public perception of female same-sex encounters as fun, passing flings in between a woman’s more serious and substantial relationships with a man.
Couples should have every right to meet their wants and needs— but there are ways to look for a third more considerately, and without imposing themselves on lesbians’ spaces. For one, they could include both their names and a picture of the two of them (on many profiles, the main photo is of the girl by herself, paired with her name on its own. It wasn’t until after matching with “her” that their couple status would reveal itself).
**If you enjoyed this piece, you might also enjoy some of the other writing I’ve done on my LGBTQ+ experiences: