Dear Carol,

I have been out of the closet as a lesbian since I was in my teens. I have been happy and proud of the life I have made for myself, in spite of some serious issues having to do with my sexuality – my parents totally rejected me, for one thing. I had to go out on my own at a young age and I did it – made it through college and everything. Of course the support of my women’s community helped to make all this possible – my lovers, my friends.

Now, though, I have a problem none of them are very supportive about – at least, I am worried none of them will be. I’ve been having a fling with a guy! Don’t ask me how it happened. I wasn’t expecting or looking for it. But I am happy about it, at least personally – me and this boy get along great, have a lot in common… it’s the same things that make it work with a woman, though I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised. But I actually AM pretty surprised by the negative comments I’m getting from some of my women friends. I don’t feel like I’ve really changed, but they’re sure acting like I have. I don’t want to dump the boyfriend – that’s how my parents expected me to act when I was fifteen and they just assumed I’d stop seeing my first girlfriend because they didn’t approve. But am I going to have to get a completely new set of friends? Do you have any suggestions for me about how to deal with this?

--I’m Not Confused, Except By My Friends

Dear INC—

Do I ever! I lived through this once, and it’s beyond irritating. But here are some thoughts on your situation. You’ve lived in the lesbian community, and it sounds like it was mostly just that – not so much a mixed and diverse LGBT (that’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered, for readers who might not know the lingo – sometimes I and Q are added on top of that, I standing for “intersex” and Q being either “queer” or “questioning”). Within a mostly single-sex and single-orientation community, common standards seem to evolve – that is, it’s easy to assume there’s a lot of similarity among the people in that community, that you all share values, sexual preferences and practices: in short, that it’s possible to define and get general agreement on just what “lesbian” means.

Using the shortest and most concise definition, you’re not a lesbian any more, since the women giving you attitude almost certainly define that to mean “women who love, desire and have sex with other women.” Pretty good working definition, as far as it goes. But it may not actually go far enough. What about the role of bisexual women in your community? What about transgendered women and men (and those who might not identify as either one)? For that matter, back in the day when I was dealing with this set of issues (which, for me, became a step towards identifying as bisexual – it may not mean the same for you, but I’ll get back to that), there were commonly women in the community who identified as “political lesbians” – women who didn’t necessarily get wet over other women, but who believed relationships with women were more egalitarian and feminist, so they committed themselves to these relationships for social-change reasons.

It’s possible to affiliate with the lesbian community from all of these points of view. In fact, if you start polling your friends and their friends and the women you see at the coffeehouse, you’d probably find more diversity than your grief-giving friends would feel comfortable about. I’ll bet someone’s girlfriend is bi-identified; someone else is contemplating coming out as transgendered; someone else fools around with guys when she’s on vacation; someone else doesn’t actually have sex with women or anyone other than herself, but she chooses to affiliate with the lesbian community. Maybe it’s okay to talk about this with each other and maybe it isn’t, but I’ll bet that if you take the lid off the pot, you’ll find that the women in your world are living their intimate lives in any number of ways.

So you can too! But one thing you may need to do is seek out a more open-minded and bi-friendly part of your community. First, I’d confront your nay-saying friends and tell them exactly what you told me: “Hey, my mom and dad kicked me out over who I was sleeping with, and I do not want to think you’re capable of that kind of thing.” Maybe these women need a little reminder that the LGBT community came together so we could be ourselves. This is Pride month, after all – not a bad time to be reminded of human sexual diversity and to revel in it. So call your friends on their small–mindedness. They don’t have to socialize closely with you and the boyfriend, but they expect other people to respect their lives and loves, and they can make room for yours. The ones who are truly your friends will get used to it. In fact, they’ll come to support it – maybe not tomorrow, but eventually.

When you make contact with the bisexual folks in your community, they’ll tell you this stuff happens all the time – but less so now, perhaps, than it did back when I was having these sorts of conversations with my friends. If there are bi organizations or social groups in your town, consider getting to know the people there. You may or may not choose to identify yourself as bisexual – many people in the queer community are comfortable with that label and others aren’t so much, but bottom line, you’ll have a good deal in common with the people who do embrace it. There are some great books about bi community and identity; you may want to pick up Closer to Home, Bi any Other Name, or the work of Paula Rust, who specifically studied the relationships between bi women and lesbians. You’re probably going to find much that is familiar in her book Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics: Sex, Loyalty, and Revolution.

What are the alternatives to identifying as lesbian or bi? Well, intriguing research has pointed to the possibility that some women identify their sexual orientation according to the gender of their partner. As such, you could choose to call yourself heterosexual – although I’m guessing from the tone of your letter that you’d prefer not to do that. You might feel that this fella is the only man you’d ever desire, and hence that you’re not really bisexual. (Remember, though, that plenty of bi-identified people don’t have more than one partner, much less two. They are responding to potential in their lives, not actual lived experience.) So you can also just call yourself queer; or pansexual; or nothing at all. We gain so much from the community that comes with sexual orientation labels that it’s easy to forget that to some extent, these are optional. People will identify you based on their own observations, preferences, and prejudices, but perhaps you don’t choose to join them – perhaps you’d rather say, “I’m just a person, doing my thing, and I don’t need any label beyond that.”

You might like to check out the book I edited about people who don’t identify in either-or ways around gender and sexual orientation, PoMoSexuals. It sends the message you haven’t been getting from your friends – that there are lots of ways to live your life. By the way, let me share with you a bit of insight that comes from bisexual theorists – people who only accept or experience desire for one gender often don’t understand others who don’t limit their possible partners to one gender. In this version of the world, your lesbian friends have more in common with your straight parents than they know! You’ve experienced desiring more than one sort of person, which takes you out of the monosexual camp.

But the bottom line is, you want your friends and your community to make space for you and your personal choices. You may have to get into a few dozen discussions with people, but there is plenty of support in the queer community today for the sort of diversity of experience to which you’ve opened the door. By all means make some new friends – that’ll help – and tell your old ones you expect them to act like friends. Good luck.