A Tryst at the Library: Lesbian Sex in Public

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Part of the reason why is no doubt what anti-trans lesbians (unreasonably) fear: More and more young people are realizing that they identify as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth — and more and more young people are realizing they’re attracted to people of two or more genders. But even though there are plenty of trans and nonbinary lesbians, and plenty of cis lesbians (like me) who don’t think that “lesbian” should be defined exclusively as “cis woman who’s only attracted to cis women,” our identity still hasn’t been able to shake the sexist, classist, and anti-gay stereotypes of lesbians as uncosmopolitan boomer TERFs, sporting Tevas and cargo pants covered in cat hair. It largely relies on internet shorthand, obscure symbols used by lesbians around the world. Nella would send these images and emoticons to other women. Those in the know would respond.

The country has been home to bouts of conflict since independence in 1962. But today, for many young people enjoying the nightlife in Bujumbura, those tensions feel another lifetime away. When I first pitched this story to my editors, I thought I’d be reporting on a lesbian cultural artifact in its twilight years. The women who’ve faithfully gone on dozens of Olivia trips over the decades are getting older, and I didn’t have a lot of faith that younger queer people were going to step in and save companies like this from extinction. Other elements of lesbian culture have been steadily dying; why should Olivia be any different? While many people still use the term lesbian sex, any LGBTQ+ person will tell you it’s outdated. Lesbian sex implies it involves two women who both identify as lesbians. We know not just women have vulvas and vaginas (some transgender and non-binary people do, too), and that not all women and people with vulvas who have sex with other women and people with vulvas identify as lesbians (they may identify as queer, bisexual, or pansexual, for example). So instead of using the term lesbian sex, we should instead be referring to it with a more inclusive term, like vulva-to-vulva sex, sex between two women or people with vulvas, or even just queer sex. But after meeting Lynette, I saw how much pride she took in her butch womanhood, which wasn’t some androgynous nowhere zone — femininity’s absence — but a whole universe unto itself. (She wore a different suit to dinner every night.)I don’t care,” Lynette said, shrugging. She told me she’d lived on this earth for 53 years. She knew what she wanted. And now it was my turn to figure that out for myself. I would move out of an apartment that I adored, that I’d almost single-handedly furnished, that I thought I’d live in for years to come. I would hug my landlady, crying again because she was crying for me.

I would tell my therapist everything in one fell swoop, and I’d be so relieved and grateful when she seemed genuinely happy for me. By this point, I was — somewhat unintentionally — quite drunk. We started making out (I was still peeing) and almost right away, I began writing a goofy story about it in my head, thinking about how I’d relay the anecdote to my friends (“So I had sex in the bathroom of a catamaran???”). But there was another part of me that was very much not into it, especially when the makeout gave way to other things and people started banging on the bathroom door.It's been four years since Alaina was raped and she still has no plans to pursue formal charges against her rapist. She says, unflinchingly, that she has moved on in other ways: She's chosen to change her name, and has moved to a new city where she has pursued a successful freelance writing career, often writing about sexual assault within the LGBTQ community. She and a few other women go out to speak to lesbian and bisexual women in the villages. They hear about them through loose local networks, both on and offline, and through friends of friends. It overwhelmed me, just then, the sudden force of my wanting. I wanted my own big, strong butch. Someone who wasn’t looking for someone to help them grow, because they’ve done most of their growing already.

Because we didn’t always have that. There was a time when we were out of favour because we weren’t ‘the right sort of lesbians’.” The club was subjected to demonstrations by the likes of the Gay Liberation Front who disapproved of the secrecy of the club, at a time when women could lose their children for being gay. The indomitable Gina Snr’s response was to call the police on them. And then, for women who might not be "out," shame about their sexual orientation or a fear of being outted significantly hinders their ability to report. If you're closeted—or even semi-closeted—formally coming forward with sexual assault allegations could mean compromising your professional or familial relationships by revealing your orientation. (The guarantee of keeping your job as an LGBTQ American currently varies per state.) The downward economic spiral of losing one's job to report a same-sex rape that won't even be deemed legitimate is simply not worth it—literally. So I’m surprised to say I might actually travel with Olivia again, skeptical as I remain of cruise ethics in general. And that’s because of all the things that happened in the eight days I spent aboard the Summit — things I wasn’t remotely expecting.

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The city, with its colonial-era Art Deco buildings surrounding a market, a football stadium and places of worship, sits on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. They meet once a month, in different places. Sometimes in public but mostly behind closed doors. Most of them are wearing jeans and T-shirts in various colours, patterns and styles. When I kissed Lynette goodbye at our appropriately miserable reentry to the real world — Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan — I still wasn’t exactly sure what the hell I was supposed to do next. This seems like it shouldn't be a victory. And yet, the list of movies who've accomplished the same feat is painfully abbreviated. Don't talk to me about Blue is the Warmest Color, a movie made famous for its extended, impractical sex scenes and allegations of harassment by its director, Abdellatif Kechiche. Kechiche reportedly bullied the two female protagonists as well as his staff, forcing them to work 16-hour workdays under extreme pressure. Critics further accused the director of creating "voyeuristic" sex scenes intended to solicit the male gaze. Her next step was to explain to her mother that it wasn’t a phase - a hetrosexual life was not for her.