I rarely leave my comfort zone but unfortunately with my graduate degree and work schedule, I am pushed often to make contact with the world.
Truth be told, social gathering and networking are the most anxiety provoking experiences I have to endure and I hate making conversation.
Usually it has nothing to do with the people or the fact that I am a gay women, it is due in most part to the fact that I feel either invisible or like a fraud.
Straight women will have difficulty understanding this concept and there are a lot of gay women that won't ever feel this but when some of us venture out we look indistinguishable to our own and it can be very lonely.
This week I have been away in Santa Barbara for my PhD Orientation.
I was thinking, this will be an amazing opportunity to meet my academic peers and also to meet fellow LGBT following the same career course.
I also made the assumption that because I was in California there would be a wealth of my community running around.
That was not the case, and in fact there were some truths I learned that hurt and that felt unfair.
First I was reminded that just because I am gay, most often gay women will stay away.
I am still trying to figure that out, because it could be my own lack of interpersonal skills that drives them away but I have often found that gay women have straight friends and/or girlfriends whom at some point were ex-girlfriends or friends with benefits where funds have dried out.
This truth for me is really upsetting and also annoys me because I feel pushed aside by my own community due to my sexuality, not to mention the assumption that I would ever want to have sex with you just because your gay.
I have basically been discriminated against by the lesbian nation before they have even come to know my nature and decided that I must be a sex hungry girlfriend stealing woman.
I have become so jaded and disappointed that friendships are not formed due those assumptions, and that they are formulated by insecurities and past hurts.
Then again I might be just that annoying and boring that they are just turned off by the mere sight of me.
I really do not know what else I could attribute to my lack of lesbian friends.
The second truth I learned is that I really do not look gay and that people will never get over that fact and that there will always be shocked faces when I say it.
It is so freaking frustrating to have to state that part, of which you are, (and most butch and androgynous women will not have to endure this invisibility cloak) but for me it is a daily battle.
I was even told this week "I would have never guessed," and although it was said in a polite and playful manner it was still a reminder that there is a part of me that I love and want to share with the world that is hidden.
Now you might think, Alex what's the big deal and who cares, just be happy with who you are! The truth is that I am very happy with whom I am but I am often unable to fully demonstrate it.
Seeming straight often puts you in the predicament of not being taken seriously as a Gay woman because overt discrimination is something we may not face.
We get hit on by men who may assume that we are playing hard to get or think that saying we are a lesbian is a turn on, and worst of all it is really freaking hard to get a date with a woman! Even this week I went to three gay bars and in all three I got hit on by men and not a single woman...
in a freaking GAY CLUB! My childhood best friend was laughing so hard I thought she was going to wet herself.
Even she agrees that looking straight in a gay world is a disadvantage or that maybe I need a make over.
I just wish for one day I did not feel like I have to come out and say "Hello, I am Lesbian, that wants to be seen for who I am.
" I don't feel like a butch and do not want to have to change my shell to fit a mold, but sometimes, most times, I just want to be seen in my community and not walked past.
Maybe it is this craving that drives me to connect with the LGBTQ world and advocate for our needs as often I feel mine are unmet.
Okay I know I am being a big cry baby, but I do really want to know how do you feel? Alex Karydi~The Lesbian Guru