“I just had my own sort of feelings that people would think I was weird. The other big thing was like, ‘What do I do when I don’t get the same attention from men that I’ve been getting my whole life? That’s a lot of validation that I don’t want to lose.’ It’s a big part of your identity when you’re like, ‘Boys like me and I get boyfriends,’ but then you’re also like, ‘But I don’t want boyfriends, so then who am I?’ The day after I came out, I remember just walking around in public and feeling like, ‘I don’t have to care if guys are looking at me and thinking that I look pretty’ because I had gone through my life being really concerned about that. I would walk around and wonder to myself if I looked cute, or whether my hair looked good. And, the first day that I didn’t have to think about it, or when I caught myself thinking about it but realized I didn’t have to anymore because I no longer cared whether guys think I’m hot or not, it was such a good feeling. I was like, ‘Oh my god. I’m free.’
If there is any validation I need from women, it’s not in the same way. Women are not men, and we don’t interact with each other in the same way. Inherently in straight male-female relationships, there’s a level of patriarchy that doesn’t go away just because you love each other. There is this well-established power dynamic. So you feel like you have to be beautiful for them, just because that’s what we have been conditioned to do as a society. But in gay relationships, it doesn’t exist in the same way.”
— Justine Waddell (she/her), 21, woman, lesbian.
