Everyone knows that college is the time for experimenting. It’s become an integral fact in Hollywood and our culture. Experimenting with lifestyles, alcohol, drugs, sex, with your personality, and on and on it goes. However, the most common experimenting we hear about is with sexuality, especially when it comes to girls.
Straight women testing the waters of their sexuality is in about every movie or show that involves coeds or a woman who went to college when she was younger. There are many articles written on the subject in prestigious magazines and journals, and many studies run by various groups, including the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, that state that the number of women experimenting is on the rise. And with the release of Panic! at the Disco’s latest single “Girls/Girls/Boys,” which proudly proclaims, “Girls love girls and boys,” we see our culture basically water-boarding women into the belief that they have to experiment with lesbianism while in college. Between being here at Emerson (number one LGBT+ friendly school in the nation!), hook-up culture, and especially if there’s party scenes that involve alcohol, women feel less culturally inhibited to explore their sexuality than ever before.
And this is great! It means that we have reached a point in our culture where people have the freedom to test the waters and learn what they like sexually without fear of discrimination, judgment, or shaming. By all means, kiss, have sex with, and do anything with as many people as you want to figure out where you stand. But please, don’t do it with me.
As a woman who identifies as bisexual, I get it. I understand the appeal. Girls are hot. I can sympathize with where you’re coming from. I can see no flaw in Scarlett Johansson’s curves, or Kat Denning’s swagger and half-smile, or literally everything about Tatiana Maslany. But at the same time, when I know that there are self-identifying straight women hitting on me at parties who want to make out “for fun,” “because it’s hot,” or just because they plain-old want to, I can’t help but feel a little used.
When you, a straight woman, use me for your experiment, I feel as if part of my experience as a queer woman has been invalidated. The years spent taking baby steps with my identity, fighting for every inch of distance, to reach the point where I’m comfortable with it, have all been invalidated by your quest for playtime. For you, this is fun; for me, women are part of my sexual lifestyle, something that was a part of me before you embarked on your homoerotic sexcapade. Every time a tipsy straight woman wants to make out, I feel used because they see my sexuality as a “come hither” when it’s actually a “please don’t.”
I feel this way because I know that this is never going to go anywhere. When you flirt with someone, you think it might lead somewhere. Not necessarily to the bedroom, but maybe to the exchange of phone numbers, getting coffee a few days later, and the next week maybe dinner and a movie. There is no potential behind making out with straight girls for me. It’s a waste of time that is going to leave me feeling used and empty. They see it as an edgy experience that you can check off your college bucket list. There is not any potential for this to be something more than a one-time make-out session. No future dates, no flirty texting, no possibility for this to even become a hook up. I guess it’s not hot for me for the exact reason it is hot for you: it’s nothing.
I want you to know that there is another human on the other end of your desire; a human with a history of sexuality, emotions, and experiences that you may or may not know. A person’s sexuality is an important facet of their life and it can be even more important if you had to go through a self-reflective journey to reach it. To disregard something that deeply woven into the fiber of my being is disrespectful, prejudiced, and ignorant. It is incredibly offensive to think that since liking girls is part of my sexuality that I am attracted to all girls and want to kiss all girls. Because you decide to be bi-curious for one night does not make that “lusty bisexual” trope real. This whole perspective reduces me down to a sexual object, a convenient opportunity for you to take what you want as if I shouldn’t have a say in the matter.
By no means do I want to shame anyone who is discovering where they fall on the sexuality spectrum. Have as many safe experiences with as many genders as you feel, just please, please talk to the person first and make sure that your sexual status is okay with the other person. Remember that these elements might not always be clear to others and they might have these same feelings. Lay your cards on the table and go have some fun! Just keep in mind that it’s all about respecting your partner and making sure they’re okay and you’re okay every step of the way.
Tori is a butt-kicking, film-making, patriarchy-smashing Film Production major. She's also a seven-year vegetarian who is into Disney movies, pina coladas, and getting caught in the rain.
Image: Corbis