What Keeps Lesbians Apart?

Lesbian Connection: What Stands In The Way?

If you go on Tinder, you'll quickly see how many young lesbians put in their profile that they're looking for lesbian friends. 

I used to think this was just some kind of disingenuous euphemism, but then I realized a ton of young lesbians ARE actually looking for lesbian friends. 

This led me to the following line of questioning: Why is it so hard for lesbians to make friends with each other in the 21st century, that we've turned to the top hookup app to try to make friends instead?

Here are a couple of theories. 

In 2023, lesbian visibility is low

Theory #1: Low Lesbian Visibility

We live in a straight world. It's generally the default assumption that a woman is straight, not a lesbian. 

Complicating that, some straight women can get insulted when you ask them about their sexuality. I've never really understood why, but whatever. The point is, your average lesbian, with the lack of visual tip-offs clearly indicating someone's a lesbian, could be walking by lesbians every day without even knowing it. 

If a woman looks stereotypically lesbian, and it feels too risky to ask them about their sexuality directly, the only way you're really gonna find out if they're a lesbian is if they tell you (or more likely, if they allude to it).   

It would probably be easier for younger lesbians to make more lesbian friends if it was super clear who was a lesbian and who wasn't. 

Theory #2: Gathering Places = Kaput

One place lesbians used to meet a lot was the feminist bookstores that sprung up during the 1970s in the US. Many of those bookstores have since closed down. 

There were also feminist cafes. 

There were secret feminist tearooms. 

And there were feminist restaurants. There still is one in Connecticut, called Bloodroot. 

There was Michfest, or Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, but that's gone. 

It's hard for us to make lesbian friends in our 20s because it's hard to find each other. 

It's this hard to find each other is because many of the places the last generation of lesbians met each other in, no longer exist. 

Anyway, this has been a really depressing trudge through the graveyard of lesbian-majority spaces, but they're not all gone.

As I write about here, there are still dozens of women's lands you can visit (or even move to) in the United States. There are also a growing number of women's festivals coming back to the woods every single year. 

Theory #3: Lesbian Friends Don't Occur To Us As A Legitimate Option

I've heard people imply that if a lesbian wants to have lesbian friends, they're obsessed with their sexuality. "Why would you care what sexuality your friends are?" 

I decided not to devote a lot of oxygen to this section of this post, because I really think refuting this point is already giving it way too much important in the first place.

That said, it's super ordinary for straight people to have only straight friends. The same logic follows for lesbians. However, since it's harder to find each other, as lesbians, we usually have to intentionally seek each other out. It's at this point of beginning to seek, that these clamoring societal voices tend to be the loudest, questioning our desire to find each other. 

We try to find lesbian friends, sometimes not even knowing that's what we're looking for, and if we finally crystallize this desire long enough to say it out loud, it's often shot down or looked at with suspicion. 

Theory #4: Afraid To Approach Other Women

It's common for lesbians to be scared to ask other women out. Lesbians aside, most people in general, aren't super comfortable just approaching someone and asking them to hang out or become friends. 

However, as lesbians, we've usually experienced a decent amount of social rejection for one reason or another by the time we reach out 20s. We also may not have the confident role modelling from older lesbians that might help, if we don't know any, or if the older lesbians we know aren't particularly confident.

Finding The Lesbians

As Alix Dobkin so poetically wrote here, finding the lesbians is a process. It's intentional. It usually doesn't just happen. And it changes us. It changed me. 

I presented a few theories here as to what factors can make it hard to find the lesbians, but in my opinion, it's really how those factors combine that makes Finding The Lesbians a unique, magical, strange kind of journey. 

Not feeling sure of ourselves can make it harder to make lesbian friends. This is compounded by the fact that women are assumed to be straight, and it's hard to determine who is a lesbian in the first place, while asking women directly if they're lesbians can be risky. Further, this problem is intensified by a near-total lack of designated spots where lesbians can go to meet each other. 

Find Lesbian Friends 

To find women's land near you, visit the women's land map. Reach out directly to the women's land in your area, or in an area you'll be travelling to, for more info about how you can visit. Expect to undergo a vetting process that can be as quick as a phone call or as extensive as an in-person meetup.  

If you are a lesbian in the United States, or a woman of any sexual orientation who wants to learn more about women's lands near you, email findwomensland at gmail dot com to get information about women's lands in your local area.