…more often than not, they are not gay women. They are barsexuals. From my experience, (and I say my experience because of course this is not a blog about knowing all facts, just my experience as a gay woman,) when two women kiss in a bar, they are generally doing so to attract the attention of men. I’m not speaking about women in gay bars or lesbian bars. I’m speaking of your average club, or pub. I’m speaking more so on the night club or strip club sect of bars.
I can’t rememer where I heard the term barsexuals. It was years ago before the Tyra Banks episode where women who called themselves barsexuals were featured. But basically this is what “Barsexual” means. A barsexual is a straight woman that kisses other women for the attention of straight men.
I remember when I was single how irritated this would make me as a gay woman. How is a gay woman supposed to differentiate their dating opportunities from those who are actually interested in the same sex to those who aren’t interested? The answer: Very carefully. Sometimes I get it wrong, but I would say that with more experience with dating women and fine tuning my gaydar, *fiddles with electronic gadget in my phone* I can learn to get it right more often.
The weekend prior to this one, I was at a night club with my girlfriend and some friends. I’m not sure if it’s a thing for people who aren’t gay to break the boundaries and try to fire up and attract someone who is gay to fondle and “play with them”, or if it is just my experience. I had friends of a friend we were at the club with, attempting to sit really closely, give me lap dances, give me kisses… And that’s great. Really. But I wasn’t single. And I am still not single. I have boundaries and I did my best to make them clear in a polite way by pushing them aside and moving over in the booth that I was sitting at. I love my girlfriend, so much. I am not going to mess up what I have with my lady with some woman who is likely a barsexual to have 5 minutes of fun fondling someone’s breasts and making out with them at a club, much to the chagrin and entertainment of other barsexuals and men around.
For me, being a gay woman has been hard enough. To fight for expressing and living as honestly as I can, while facing discrimination, learning the rules of dating the same sex while trying to find your niche and place in the world that doesn’t openly accept you (at least not fully), is so hard and downright exhausting sometimes. But when you face the opposite, where everyone accepts you but either misinterprets you or assumes you don’t have any boundaries and attempts to break them even though they know you’re dating someone, I find that a hard pill to swallow. To me, that isn’t fair for anyone. Although I do know of some women in hetersexual relationships that are allowed to have flings with women of the same sex because for some reason, “that’s not cheating”? How is that different? Is it because another woman is less of a threat to your relationship?
Just some food for thought. I like to keep barsexuals out of my boundaries. As a single gay woman, I prefer to play with women who actually want to go home with me (bisexual and lesbian women who aren’t looking for a side to another relationship). As a gay woman who declares herself in love and taken, I’ll keep my lady by my side.
theconfessionsofaLesbian 