Katka-K

Let's go beyond being proud, let's really enjoy being gay!

2011-09-30T01:05:00.001+01:00

Insomnia has forced me onto the internet tonight. It's a rare occurrence for me, I usually sleep, well, like a dream! In my late night boredom, I was reading over my past posts and wondering why it is that I've felt so little like I need to write, and so little like I need to rant! I still rant daily, although it's mostly of a different nature. It seems like less and less are my thoughts dominated by 'gay' issues. Does this officially mean I'm getting old?

Well, probably, but I could have ascertained that from various other factors, like my new inability to party on a week night, or my desire to buy household items like lamps. My question is though, why is it that my politics have shifted so far away from being specifically gay?

There are a few answers to this question. Perhaps, as we get older and more comfortable in our own skin, we are less likely to focus so much on what makes us different. We all have to learn to stand on our own two feet at some stage, and every one has their cross to bear, or bridge to cross, or cross to carry over a bridge.

Maybe it was the fear of delving into the unknown that caused constant need to navigate our sexuality. When I came out to my mother, the first thing she said to me was that she was worried my life was going to be more difficult. I suppose to some extent she was right, there are difficulties that we face that a lot of heterosexual people don't. But the privileged nature of my position in society, and the legal freedom of the country that I live in, an accepting family, have largely sheltered me from genuine fear of discrimination or danger.

In contrast to all this fear for my well being, for the most part I find myself thinking, I fucking love being gay! I get to have so much fun with the best group of girls. I get to date, flirt with and fuck whoever I like. My mind has been opened to humanity and the strange and wonderful and vastly different forms we take. I have learnt lessons on acceptance of self and others, and disregarding societal pressures. I am not bound as strictly by the gender biased expectations of society.

Here comes the rant:

Fuck the biased heterosexist view that being gay is a burden to bear! Fuck the belief that being anything other than hetero must disadvantage you and cause you pain! Fuck common perception that heterosexual privilege is just so damn amazing that to be excluded from it is a devastating consequence!

If we buy into this idea, we are buying heterosexist bullshit, and we are laying it on ourselves.

So I say to you, dear reader, nay, I beseech you! Let's not cast ourselves as the underdog and cry ourselves to sleep. And let's go beyond just being proud. Let's really enjoy being gay, and appreciate all the positives we we get from being a part of what really is an open minded and largely accepting community.

At best we are free! At worst, we are interesting at parties.

Peace, love, and all sorts of motivation to you.

Katka

Boredom-cast

2010-10-29T23:02:00.002+01:00

Studies by scientists have shown that dancing is good for your soul. Ha ha. No they haven’t. But scientists do spend a lot of time doing useless crap, very much like scientologists. Useless crap like this: "Scientists identify sexy dance moves"

Well maybe that’s not entirely useless, but it does lead me to believe, unsurprisingly, that research grants are administered by geeky men.

You know who else spends a lot of time doing useless crap? Me. And my two friends: Katherine, a graphic designer, and Susan, a receptionist. So a graphic designer and a receptionist walk in to a bar… ok, no they didn’t. Well, not on this occasion anyway. What they did do is rescue me, via email, from the horrific tedium that is my job with the email exchange below. I heart you two.

Men at work

2010-10-19T22:15:00.000+01:00

What? I'm alive? Thought you got rid of me, eh? Almost. Office drudgery near killed me and my metaphorical soul, but I appear to be back at the keyboard with more purpose than generally required for making wish lists on Amazon, so write I will! But not right now.

New post coming soon!

Why we love Lady Gaga

2010-01-11T22:08:00.001Z

A Drunken Post on Lady Gaga, the new first Lady of pop

Well, for fuck's sake, have you seen the videos? Lady Gaga is beyond awesome, and it is not just due to media hype. Well, not entirely.

I'll admit, I'm slightly biased when it comes to the Gag. At London Pride 2009 I saw her live in Heaven, and although she could have skimped on a club performance done at 2:00am, she did a full set with dancers, costume changes, live piano and everything. Not only did she perform the acoustic version of Poker Face on the piano (which had me screaming, holy fuck! She can actually sing!), but she was wrapped in clingfilm! Yes, ladies, I said CLING FILM!

I was amazed that a pop star with so much media hype actually had so much live talent. The thing about Lady Gaga is that she's not like other pop stars. She is not getting by on popular music with moderately acceptable talent and great producers, she actually has real talent. Talent which she engages 100% in the business of pop, which is far more than singing a song, but marketing, image, production, performance, and just for emphasis, IMAGE!

With original flair and pure what-the-fuck outrageousness, Lady Gaga has overshowded not only the pop stars of the naughties (ie. the lame wayy of saying the 2000s) but the nineties as well! Big call, I know. But if you can find a star with more talent, marketibility, coherent image control and outrageous originiliaty, then let me know. Plus, it doesn't hurt that she's TOTALLY hot!

Forgive my drunken ranting :) I TOTALLY love you :P

Katka

I Can't Think Straight

2010-01-07T23:25:00.057Z

A wee little lesbian movie review

Well, neither can I. I think my spell of unemployed-non-productivity has turned my brain into very thick and sticky goo, not unlike unset cement. This happens after dulling one's mind with movies, high-carb fried foods and beer for two months. On the upside, I can now talk about the films I've steadily made my way through on Katka's Epic Lesbian Movie Marathon, a feat that could only be accomplished with lavish amounts of spare time. Just to clarify, the 'epic' in that sentence refers to the movie marathon, and not to the movies. Any les-film devotee will know that the calibre of many lesbian themed films is far from epic, and so is the case with "I Can't Think Straight".

Teeny-weeny synopsis: A lovely muslim girl and a devastatingly beautiful (and engaged) Christian arab fall in love, but fear coming out because of their conservative family backgrounds.

This film isn't exactly a masterpiece of acting or directing. Or cinematography. Or scriptwriting. Or set design. Or hair styling for that matter. However, even if those minor attributes were important to you, watching Lisa Ray as the lovely Tala for 79 minutes would make it all worthwhile.

I'll be honest, even though this movie is generally rather weak, I loved it. It's really sweet and touching, the actors are all attractive and the characters are likeable. And most importantly, no body suffers from any mental illness, no one has a nervous breakdown, no one commits suicide, and no one leaves their lesbian lover to get married to a man to be miserable forever. In an amazing gesture of good, clean, wholesome (hehe) lesbian stories, they both come out to their parents (without any life-threatening backlash) and live happily ever after! YES! Suicide free fun!

So do yourself a favour, if you can turn a blind eye to the weaker elements of "I can't Think Straight" for 79 minutes (it's really not a long time) and embrace the cheesiness, it's really a feel good movie. One you could probably watch with your mom if you conveniently went to the bathroom during the sex scenes.

You can watch the full movie streaming online at this rather handy website:

http://stagevu.com/video/wbtrieylbwhw

Hoping brain activity will increase to moderate soon,

Ktkaa

Oohh, look who's back!

2010-01-06T15:55:00.000Z

Hey there boys (?) and girls, I have decided to make a very un-dramatic return to the blogosphere. Where have I been, two of you may ask? Well, I became a victim of the recession (or my poor waitressing skills, depending on who it is you are speaking to) and have been officially unemployed. Almost immediately the urge to sleep until noon everyday, have beer for breakfast and drink until I passed out overcame me. I would be lying if I said it wasn't fun.

This chain of events however led to a total productivity shut down, highly predictable when comparing a ratio of hours awake to hours drunk. But now with this foul year of Our Lord, 2010, upon us (and my savings rapidly diminishing) I have resolved to get up at least before 11:00am and write a blog once a week.

To be honest, I missed you all :)

So I brush the empty pint cans of Foster's off my table in one sweep, breath deep, and make love to my keyboard. Metaphorically of course.

It's good to be back.

Katka xx

We all learn a lesson (especially Jan Moir)

2009-10-17T03:49:00.004+01:00

Because everybody is talking about it

If there’s a hot topic, I’m just not satisfied until I get my two cents worth. So there is no way I could let Jan Moir pass under my radar without making my opinion known.

If you don’t have a Facebook account, and don’t read the Daily Mail (I’m going to assume you don’t or you probably wouldn’t be reading this), Jan Moir’s article on the death of Boyzone star Stephen Gately entitled “A strange, lonely and troubling death...” got the gays and liberals a’ buzzing with technological rage. Roughly, the article says that Gately died because of his gay hedonistic lifestyle and that all civil partnerships are doomed to fail. Well, maybe that’s not exactly what she said, but it’s your basic run-of-the-mill conservative drivel.

What really fascinated me, however, wasn’t the epic staleness of Moir’s opinion, but the swift repercussions it sparked. Facebook and Twitter immediately went insane, with groups forming and links posting all day long. So much so that the Daily Mail website crashed because it couldn’t cope with the number of visitors. Prominent celebs and journalists were tweeting replies and comments, encouraging people to lay formal complaints against the article. The same evening as the Mail went to press, Moir had already sent out a formal release defending herself and trying to explain away her thinly veiled bigotry.

All in all, for those us in the gays tired of having prejudice shoved down our throats through the conservative press, dear Jan has given us the chance to make a point:

If yee dareth to publicly offend us, oh how the gays shall smite thee with the Sword of Facebook, and strike thee down with the staff of Twitter!

Honestly, I’m impressed. For one, I've gotten used to conservative groups making noise about gay issues and harping on about it in the media, but the time has clearly passed to sit and shake our heads tisk tisking. This time it's our turn to fight back, making some noise about conservative issues and harping right on back about it in the media. It’s fun to be one of the loud indignant people for a change; these moments don't happen often for me, so I have to savour them.

More importantly though, is that the strength of any group or movement can be judged by its ability to mobilise into action, both in numbers and with speed. Today the homos and friends were out both quick and plenty. On these occasions where someone does something stupid enough to get our backs up, it’s good to know that we can bitch about it with one voice online.

Yes, you may say, it’s not like we took to marching in the streets and waving banners, but a lot of us have to work during the day, and I personally used all my banner paint for London Pride. So we have to take advantage of the easiest means available, and since most of us were logged into Facebook anyway, social networking was rather effective.

So thanks Jan for teaching us an important lesson, I think you learned one yourself along the way.

To quote Tyler Durden in Fight Club “Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not... fuck with us”

Well, not exactly, but you get the point.

A pleasure as always,

Katka xx

Praying for my time to come

2009-10-08T17:31:00.003+01:00

I often wonder why it is that I am so gay. Some people put it down to genetics, Freud said it was because of childhood trauma, and Simone de Beauvoir hinted that it might be narcissism. The more liberal and open minded say that human sexuality is fluid, like the Kinsey scale, we all float somewhere between preferring one gender or the other, and that most people rank somewhere around hetero with slightly gay tendencies.

Not me. If there’s a scale of naught to ten, with naught being ‘straight’ and ten being ‘gay’, I’d rank at somewhere around 11.5 - ‘over the top’. I don’t know what the reason for this is, I’ve had no obvious childhood trauma (can you consider being denied a ninja turtle tracksuit childhood trauma?); I don’t believe genetics alone can explain complex human behaviour; and although the most plausible of the three in my case, I don’t quite think that even I am narcissistic enough to give up on men entirely in the pursuit of dating myself.

Yet last week I had some unexpected insight as to the reason for my homosexual tendencies. The unlikely source was one of the chefs at my fascinating place of work. He’s one of those guys you generally try and avoid small talk with, a giant hulk of a man who indiscriminately calls every woman in the restaurant by the name ‘Anna’ because he doesn’t care find out what your name is. His favourite trick is to ask you ‘Are you happy, Anna?’ when you’re visibly in a bad mood, just so that he can tell you that you should turn to Jesus to be happy, regardless of your response. Once he told me after I had made a mistake with an order, that this is why women shouldn’t work. Honestly? This is why women shouldn’t work as WAITRESSES? I would hate to know just how stupid he thinks women are that even waitressing is a bit too advanced for us.

So you can understand my dismay when I was trapped in the basement of a staffroom with him the other day. Forced to iron my shirt before a shift, I knew there was no way I could escape one of his little chats. There was only one way to get through it, answer politely and don’t let him provoke me!

After a barrage of pointless questions, I foolishly let slip that my sister is getting married, I immediately regretted bringing up the topic. “Ah that is good Anna, it is good to get married. You must pray for your time to come when you will get married. Are you going to get married Anna?” Don’t let him provoke me, don’t let him provoke me! Curt “No”

“But why not, Anna? If you get married, then men will respect you because they will know that you have a man. Then the men at work won’t treat you like they do. Why don’t you want to get married Anna?”

Can you picture me ironing my shirt and trying to remain calm? Persistent bastard. He knows very well that I am “a lesbian”, and although he understands what this entails, I’m fairly certain he doesn’t believe it exists. What really piqued me about this comment though is how he feels that he has to tell me that unless I belong to a man, no men will ever respect me. How could I be foolish enough not to get this? He better tell me so that I understand.

This isn’t over, here’s the pearl:

“Why don’t you want to get married Anna? Is it because you think you are not pretty enough?”

And there it is! Finally, it has all been explained! My questions answered in a flash of blinding light!

I am a lesbian because I think I’m not pretty enough to get married. I hope this answers your questions too, because by the looks of you, you’re not pretty enough to get married either.

With my tongue in my cheek I say peace out (but then it sounds like ‘pith ot’)

Katka xxxxx

HOT Topic

2009-09-28T12:08:00.002+01:00

Controversial Blog Alert:

Why is it that whenever there’s a lesbian in the news, everybody seems to quiz me about it? Do they just assume that I follow every lesbian story because I’m a lesbian? Well, they should. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t assume I would force them to sit and listen to my strongly opinionated answers. But that’s their problem. Your problem is that you listen to my opinions for fun!

The topic that’s got me ranting this week is the Helen Goddard molestation case. For those of you that stopped reading the papers when they stopped being free (I still can’t read the LondonLite), this 26 year old music teacher had an affair with her 15 year old female student. She was found guilty on six counts of sex with a child and sentenced to fifteen months in prison. She has also been put on the sex offenders register and banned from ever working with children again.

The strange thing is, what should be a clear case of inappropriate sex offender goes to jail, actually doesn’t feel so black and white. For some reason, I can’t help feeling a bit sorry for Helen Goddard.

The fact that both her and the girl maintained through the trial that they are in love and plan to carry on seeing each other when she’s of consensual age makes me think of Goddard as a young woman who made a devastatingly bad decision.

However, the main factor sending me plunging into a sickly grey area is that Helen Goddard is really, really hot. So hot, that it makes me a little uncomfortable to think of her as a sex offender. To be controversially honest, I kind of wish she had molested me when I was 15. At that age, like any sexually confused teenager, I was desperately in love with my Art teacher, and if she had showed any interest in me you can be certain I would’ve have dived in head first, so to speak.

Perhaps that’s how this girl felt as well, but does that make it right?

NO! Foolish woman! On no level can this be considered even remotely appropriate! If this had been a male teacher with a girl, there would be a universal sense of condemnation. A female teacher with a boy? Gross. A male teacher with a boy? Oh good god in heaven, we would be up on our high horses shouting about paedophiles and sick abuses of power.

What about the girl? The Gypsy, always full of slightly offensive but somewhat insightful comments, made a valid point, “the girl probably won’t be a lesbian anymore by the time the teacher gets out of jail” The Gypsy may be wrong in assuming all teenage girls are bi for a while and then turn straight, but it’s unfair to expect a 15 year old to carry such a heavy burden. Waiting for your lover to be freed from prison while facing shame and ridicule at school? Not exactly an ideal high school career.

The truth is, this girl is a victim, so how can I even be inclined to sympathise with Goddard?

When female sexuality is concerned, I’m suddenly finding myself with a set of double standards. When two women are involved, the nature of the relationship is assumed to be far less sinister. Even the judge described it as a “difficult case”. Is this because we consider female sexuality less aggressive, less predatory, and more passive than male sexuality? Is it because we find female sexuality less threatening than masculine sexuality? To be honest, I’m not sure. It’s just hard to picture Helen Goddard as a sexual predator. Even if I do wish she was sexually preying on me.

I’m going to let ‘The Ick Factor’ lead my morals on this one, and it says ‘iiiIIIiiick!”

Girl's Girl, Lady's Girl, Girl About Town

2009-09-18T03:47:00.004+01:00

A tribute to Gay Girl About Town and how I didn't meet Katherine Richardson

thelondonpaper has never been a masterpiece of journalistic endeavour, but it sure beat the hell out of staring at a large Jamaican woman eat a Snickers out of her purse on the tube. Now that it’s folding, I can’t say I’m devastated, but there is one thing I will miss. Katherine Richardson’s Gay Girl About Town column.

This little lesbian tit bit has made my Thursday tube commute a joy since I discovered it about two months ago. Well, not so much discovered as had it thrown at me, all crumpled up and torn out by hand, by one very gypsy-like Portuguese colleague (I say colleague, but really I mean some girl I waitress with) Her rather entertaining gesture designed purely to make fun of me for being a lesbian ended with me reading the column, laughing out loud and muttering the phrase “That is so true” and “My life is just like that!” several times in succession.

Since then I’ve been a loyal follower, making sure I got thelondonpaper on the right day to be amused by her specifically lesbian topics and comedic handling of lesbian life in London. To be short, I kind of wish I was her.

There’s a story here, I may or may not have met her once and gone to her house with some friends after Mannequin one Saturday night. Seeing a blonde girl in similar glasses as her column photo, the lesbian team immediately got into a mini-celeb ruckus, arguing over whether or not it was actually her, and if we should go talk to her if it was. Admittedly, the amount of alcohol and pill consumed on this evening made all judgement rather cloudy, and no one could come up with any significant debate other than “it’s her/it’s not!” and “lets talk to her/what if it’s not!”

Eventually I got bored with this circular logic and walked up to her and asked her if she was the Gay Girl About Town, and if she wasn’t, could she please pretend to be for my friends (I am SO smooth). She laughed and said she wasn’t, but agreed to play along. For some strange reason I immediately took this as an unwillingness to take credit for her mini-celeb status, and from then on assumed she in fact was the aforementioned columnist. Funny that, she says she’s not Katherine Richardson, and I immediately believe this to be confirmation that she is. Especially since the first clue should have been that her name wasn’t Katherine. So much for scorning circular logic.

Long story shorter, the bar closed and we all went back to hers, believing fully that this was indeed, The Columnist, bought industrial quantities of vodka and trashed her lounge until the long hours of the next morning. A good eve all in all.

True identity aside, she is rather insightful. To quote from her last published piece “Gay Girl About Town is more than just some chick’s adventures in LesboLand. It is/was the only specifically gay female column in a sea of straight ones, and I am thankful to the paper for giving lesbians their own little bit of the big, bad press."

Damn, I wish I was her. In the meantime, I’ll just have to keep following her like a star struck lesbian puppy. Luckily she’s not folding with thelondonpaper, so check out her blog at gaygirlabouttown.blogspot.com. Maybe without so much editing over her shoulder she’ll be even better!

Peace out.

Katka xxxx

The Ups and Downs of gaydargirls.com

2009-08-25T02:59:00.010+01:00

Working into the early hours of the morning trying to think of something to blog about, I left my gaydargirls.com account open and logged in. The little chimes sounded to tell me I had a message and I opened it to find a rather pleasing near naked profile pic of SexyGirrl22, announcing “Hey there gorgeous, what you doing up so late?” There was an attached picture file. I opened the picture with no hesitation, but with a distinct sense of trepidation. The window sprawled across my screen to reveal a larger than life-size close-up photo of a very pink, very bald and very wet fanny.

Honestly, all this because I recently decided to make the somewhat controversial move of joining internet lesbianism at its sordid pinnacle, and placed a profile on gaydargirls.com. Now before you class me into 'desperate internet singles', let me explain the concept a bit.

In case you don't know, Gaydargirls, as the name implies, is a dating site for lesbians. It's free to join and you get basic features, and a few more features if you pay a subscription. You put up some photos, describe yourself and what you’re looking for, interests, hobbies, do you like pina collada and getting caught in the rain and so on and so on.

It's not all well lit vaginas splashing accross computer screens, it's mostly pretty mundane. I first discovered gaydargirls when I was young and half in the closet, desperately heart broken, and didn’t know what another lesbian looked like, never mind where to find one.
Gaydar provided a safe place where I could identify other girls like me in a comfortable shroud of anonymity; it was a glimmer of homo hope in my extremely hetero surroundings. Just knowing there were lesbians looking to the internet to find some sort of company was a comfort in itself, and for that I will always be grateful. For the results that followed, however, I will not.

Admittedly, the pickings were slim, but at that stage of my life I felt like Jake Gyllenhaal’s character in Brokeback Mountain when he travels over the border to Mexico looking for man-loving to fill his lonely void (no pun intended). So after searching through the twenty-odd profiles in my area and a few miserable chat attempts, I finally found a girl who seemed half decent, and we decided to meet. She did turn out to be actually decent, and we proceeded to get horrendously drunk, I believe there was making out in a car, and eventually, we slept together. The sex was AWFUL, and as it turns out, I was the first woman she slept with, so if you’re reading this, I sincerely apologise! Luckily, the girl turned out to be lovely and, with a long lapse of time to remove the cringe factor, we’re now friends.

Big shock, it didn’t sooth the emptiness in my metaphorical soul. The allure of internet dating is what it promises: being able to browse for someone you like online untill you find exactly what you're looking for, almost as if you were shopping. Add a certain sense of mystery, an embelished profile description and an over active imagination, and you have a recipe for a disasterous let down. After two more attempts and one broken heart that wasn't my own, I realised that this was never going to solve my problems, and I'd have to mend my heart the old fashioned way. Drinking.

I gave up on the internet as a way to actually meet people, it just felt a bit synthetic.

So why did I decide to enter that electronic meat market again you may ask? Well, for one my outlook has totally changed, mainly because I’m no longer confused and desperate. Yay me. Another reason is that there are just so many lesbians in London, hundreds of whom are on gaydar, it just seems it would be a waste if I didn’t investigate. The last time I joined I was looking to buy the meat (or at least sample), this time I’m just window shopping. Take a brief moment to visualise this mixed metaphor, who window shops for meat??

Rather: placing a profile on gaydargirls is the internet equivalent of showing your face at a party where you don’t know anyone, just staying for a few minutes to have a look around and to be looked at. If the party sucks, you leave with no regrets because you weren’t expecting much anyway, but you had to see for yourself that you weren’t missing out on anything. If it turns out to be great, then it’s a pleasant surprise that hopefully ends in sex.

On the less shallow side, I really think there’s also something to be said regarding this lesbian visibility I keep talking about. Sites like gaydar have a double role to play in this: providing a haven for those lesbians who aren’t visible to general society to make themselves visible to other lesbians. And yet, the very existence of the site is recognition that there are enough of us out there to make up a sizeable community. The fact that it’s a global website means that lesbians all over the world, even those dying of sexual starvation in remote areas, can access and participate in this sense of community. I joined up to be electronically counted as a lesbian, and to associate myself with lesbian visibility. (Either way, that is DEFINITELY what I’m telling people from now on!)

And to SexyGirrl22, thanks, but no thanks. I burst out laughing, closed my laptop and ran away. I am really not a meat shopper, even the window scares me!

Fun for a Girl and a Girl

2009-08-18T01:03:00.005+01:00

As the title suggests, I started this blog mostly just to give myself a space to rant about my experience as a lesbian living in London. Exploring a fabulous new city provides endless material for a good rant: having a good story to tell, friends who are just too ridiculous to go unrecorded, being slightly insane and in need of an audience, and most importantly, wanting a place to have a laugh. All of these seem like fantastic reasons to blog.

I am South African, and that means that the environment I'm used to living in is a fundamentally conservative one, especially when compared to a place like London. Of all the weird shit going on in this city, a tomboyish odd looking lesbian running around chasing girls is not really worth turning your head for. We can all relate to this feeling, whether coming from a small town or a conservative family, the permissive anonymity of the city is extremely alluring. Big cities are populated by people who left their homes in Where-eversville for a reason, and my reason was to find place that makes being a homo less stressful, and a whole lot more fun.

Living in Cape Town was great, and it is true that it’s one of the gayest cities in the world. Take a walk down Clifton 3rd Beach on any summer’s day and count the deep-tanned, oiled men wearing leather thongs if you need any proof. And that’s great… for men. But I found myself asking, where are all the lesbians? (A short answer to this would be at home watching The L Word, but I’m fairly certain it’s more complex than that).

The truth is that often lesbians are just not that visible, out on the gay scene or in mainstream culture, and the accepted stereotypes are boring and narrow or downright offensive. Those boxing-in categories we’re all so fond of don’t offer lesbians many options in the public sphere. Take my personal favourite, which I’ll call Box P for easy referencing and dramatic effect; the “Porn Fantasy” box. Tell a straight man that you’re a lesbian and see the excitement cross his face as he places himself in the Postman’s shoes, walking in on the Hot Lesbians having sex by the pool who have just been waiting for his cock to arrive to complete the experience. Then watch his eyes dart to your girlfriend and the drool slide down his chin and consider yourself placed in a box. Other great boxes include “just likes her friends a little too much”; “can’t find a man”; “wants to be a man”; “afraid of ‘real’ sex”; and don’t forget “doesn’t exist because women have no sexuality separate from men so how could they possibly want sex with each other and even if they did what the hell would that entail anyway?”

Even to sympathisers, we're often seen as Senead O'Conner listening, sport playing, angry feminist, man hating, vegetarian hippies. Not that some of us aren't some of those things, (I love sport and Senade) but not all of us are all of those things.

The ways of being perceived broader society and even by each other are still rather limited. If you face the risk of being labelled and defined so narrowly, you aren’t exactly enthusiastic about making yourself visible. On the contrary, it makes you want to stay at home and watch The L Word. There are just way too many different types of lesbians out there to be crammed into the few boxes available to us, and frankly, it’s getting a tad crowded in here. In fact, the only place more crowded is the closet.

On my first night out in Soho I found myself screaming into my mate Svetlana’s ear like an overexcited tourist:

“I AM FUCKING NEVER LEAVING LONDON!”

Feel free to laugh here at my newbie excitement, but what drove me to such maniacal drunken exclamations is a real enthusiasm. The size of the lesbian community in London has, to say the very least, surprised me. Coming from a city with one Lesbian bar in which you could find the same 25 lesbians every Saturday night (if you were lucky), I am continually astonished (and delighted) by our sheer numbers. No wonder I was screaming insanely, I felt free for the first time, well, ever: free to be my raging lesbo self without having to look over my shoulder and without having to apologise to anyone. With numbers comes that sense of community that I’ve been longing for and dreaming about for so long, and with community comes our long awaited visibility.

Everywhere I go, all the women I meet on the scene, what I see in the papers and on the TV screen, what I hear on the radio, I get the impression that something is happening. I came to London seeking the centre of that something, a movement I could feel even in South Africa, starting slowly at first, but gaining speed and power. Lesbians have begun to detach themselves from being a mere appendage to the gay-male scene, and we’re making a name ourselves as women who aren’t going to sit on the sidelines and moan quietly about the fact that those few allocated boxes just aren’t enough anymore.

Lesbian culture has kicked open the closet door with a Converse clad foot, stuck out a fantastically styled and shouted: “Fuck it! Here we are bitches, like it, don’t like, get over it!” We are fighting our way into the mainstream, and all over old stereotypes are being spectacularly bucked (and new ones being made), but there’s a movement with some serious momentum and I feel that I have arrived in London just in time to be riding the wave. A wave that will break in South Africa given time, but for the moment I am more than happy to be swimming in Soho.