If you’re anywhere close to the lesbian side of TikTok inevitably you will see queer women portrayed as natural born sex gods. Their skills are largely the result of honest communication during sex, and, depending on who you’re asking, a vast supply of brightly coloured sex toys and positions that would make even the cast of Euphoria blush. This is certainly true for the more seasoned queer women, those who have the kind of sex that requires a drinks break and energy bars. However, there is a growing issue that while this narrative reinvigorates and de-stigmatizes queer sex; it can also become polarising to those who cannot orgasm, have a low sex drive, or lack experience.
To clarify, in my experience, the queer community is noticeably more accommodating of individuals with different sexual behaviours than others. However, the tongue-in-cheek efforts to deride the orgasm gap in straight relationships have populated the media to such an extent that it becomes difficult to make those first steps towards having sex as a newly out woman. I felt so pressured by this expectation that my relationship with physical intimacy changed as there was a large part of the world of sex and dating that I hadn’t experienced. Although the women I went on dates with were perfectly welcoming, I locked up, feeling too embarrassed and too old to ask basic questions about how to make a woman feel good. It felt like going down on a woman was an integral aspect of one’s queer identity as a way to reclaim sex from the voyeuristic male gaze but to such an extent that I felt like my queerness became defined by my sexual prowess, or lack thereof. This was due to me thinking that I wasn’t ‘good enough’ or ‘experienced enough’ to claim my part in the community.
This meant that, despite coming out when I was 19, it was still a good few years before I had my first experiences sexually with a woman. This may have been attributable to any number of other, unrelated personal insecurities about my body and gender presentation, but I remember one primary bewildering stress was the matter of how to shave; how much, how little, and what each decision seemed to represent about me. It’s surprising how immobilising these kinds of cosmetic decisions become.
Was it more or less feminist, or even progressive to shave a certain way? I’ve always hated razor burn, and no matter which soaking, exfoliating and aftercare techniques I try, by day two, there are always an array of raised, angry, red blotches that seem to manifest all my fears that I’m doing something fundamentally wrong. Or, as a result of leaving pubic hair too long, was I unclean, or did I smell? What did discharge mean, and why did it stain all my underwear? These, it turned out, were all totally natural questions, and the feeling of ignorance stemmed in a big way from the various failures of the British sex education system and its unwillingness to discuss female pleasure or how to practice safe sex in a queer relationship. This led, in turn, to me whipping out the privacy browser on my phone, turning the screen brightness down in my bedroom, and googling endless questions that all seemed to contradict each other. I felt even more confused and ashamed than when I had started.
However, after I found people I could trust in my life and in my community, these questions soon cleared up, and I experimented with what I felt comfortable doing with my body. I know everyone says that no one that’s worth dating will mind how you groom yourself, but we always consider ourselves the exceptions to every rule, don’t we? I think, as a result of the way in which shaving was figured as a part of the pre-sex routine, it made it all the more loaded and associated with sharp things that could hurt me. The reality was much different when I realised that sex is soft edges, soft skin, little bristles everywhere from places we forgot, soft lips, long legs and gorgeous hair and all these sensations that, when you’re truly invested in the moment and in love with the person, it makes everything else melt away. It’s not that you don’t see these perceived imperfections, it’s just that they form a part of the person you adore, rather than being any sort of reason not to love them. But as a touch-starved baby gay in 2017 that didn’t want to ask her friends to go with her to the gay club’s one night in town, that sense of things seemed a long way away.
The depictions of queer women being seemingly preternaturally talented at sex represented a celebration of community that I felt excluded from when I was first coming out. It stalled my willingness to start experimenting. Now that I have the right experience and language to articulate my needs, I can reflect that I needed that time to come to terms with myself. However, that attitude doesn’t resolve any of the issues I have raised, it just plays into the smug double bind that sex only ‘doesn’t matter’ when you’re having it!
Maybe we all just think we’re unlovable when we’re 16, but with the mechanics of ‘coming out’ you must remember we are also coming into something that’s new and, at times, bewildering. A community that we will always feel late to, playing catch up with people our age or younger who seem to already know themselves better. I lean towards masculine presenting, so-called top-energy in most sexual scenarios, but this desire to control and lead the way was in direct competition with the feeling that I’d never feel experienced enough to actually try it out. For me it was a brick wall that I circled for years and have just eventually climbed. In retrospect, it was clear that I wasn’t with the person that I could relax into and feel safe and truly seen. That wasn’t anyone’s fault – but I hung around too long thinking that the vague level of discomfort was just a part of relationships that most people eventually powered through. When I was comfortable in a new relationship, however, it made all the difference and I felt more connected to sex and more willing to take risks and progress things further.
The long and short of it is that we all want to be the lesbian sex gods that we feared. We’ll get there eventually, or, much like the straight relationships my friends are always complaining about, close enough to make do.
Edited by Charlotte Lewis ( Editor-in-Chief)