I’m a lesbian, so why do I still care about being attractive to men?

“Why is compulsory heterosexuality such a bitch to get rid of?”

If you were to tell me back in 2011 that I, a 13-year-old girl infatuated with pointy-chinned anime boys and fluffy-haired male pop stars, would one day grow up to be a bonafide lesbian, I would’ve laughed in your face. 

After all, my teenage bedroom was the epitome of early 2010s girlhood: boy band posters, magazine cut-outs of emo singers and even a life-size poster of Justin Bieber, which I begged my friend to give me from her latest Dolly. I, like my contemporaries, fantasised about being the type of girl these male teen idols described in their songs.

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In my early-adolescent mind, lesbians weren’t worth singing about. They were jokes spat out by then-popular comedians or a punchline in my favourite TV shows, at best; women sat at home with multiple cats, braless and airing out their unshaven pits in loose singlets while mouthing off about how much they disliked men. At worst, they were a fetishised porn category built solely to cater towards a leering male audience. 

Both concepts, while cooked up by misogynists and homophobes, utterly terrified me. So, I explicitly emphasised my adoration for boy bands in an effort to shield away my more sapphic interests. Although looking back, I don’t think building a shrine dedicated to Lady Gaga did me any favours.

The fear of being seen as unworthy of male attention rocked me to my core because the songs I listened to, the movies I watched and the magazines I read expressed just how important it is. I always made sure I kept my body shaven (especially under my arms), wore makeup (but never too much) and went out of my way to listen to male philosophers, musicians and milquetoast YouTubers, soaking up everything they deemed worthy of talking about. 

Shrouding myself in a veil of plausible heterosexuality during my teen years practically became a full-time job and unfortunately, since my brain absorbed everything during my formative years, I’m finding it tricky to leave it back in 2011.  

There’s a famous Margaret Atwood quote that sums up this phenomenon pretty well and knocked me off my feet when I first read it: “You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.” Fucking hell, I thought.

That statement is hefty enough to rattle any woman but since I’m someone who has no desire to be with a man, and will shout from the rooftops about how we should de-centre men from every aspect of our lives (sorry little me, you became the very thing you feared), why do I still feel the sting of male disapproval? Why am I still so enamoured with being seen as ‘one of the good ones’ in the eyes of my male peers? Why is compulsory heterosexuality such a bitch to get rid of?

I’ve been grappling with this contradictory part of my identity for a hot minute now. You can call me Schrödinger’s lesbian; I’m an unabashed gay feminist who’s stuck with an ever-present male voice bouncing around my brain, disapproving of everything I do, say and look like. It’s exhausting.

For a long time, I wasn’t sure how to approach this topic with my fellow lesbians and queer friends, yet surprisingly, many of them seemed to share similar past struggles.

“It took me getting to my mid-to-late twenties to feel comfortable existing outside of the heteronormative space,” says one. “I sometimes miss the instant feeling of gratification of being rewarded for being feminine,” says another. “But it’s a very temporary and fleeting thing.” 

I also found some relief by watching actor Molly McCrann joke about this very topic on her TikToks. Her comment section is filled with like-minded queer women sharing similar experiences of feeling trapped within a society built on compulsory heterosexuality and how “comphet sucks lol”.  

But in the words of the inimitable Azealia Banks, what now? The male gaze isn’t going away any time soon, especially when even lesbians struggle to emancipate themselves from its grip. It comes as some relief that both my friends and this anonymous TikTok audience provide me with the same answer: it’ll take time, but soon you won’t care anymore. 

If playing the long-game and persistently swatting away my inner voyeur’s commentary happens to be the solution, so be it. I batted away gay thoughts for years, how’s this any different? 

For more on the male gaze in queer media, read this.