Tobi Abdul
Staff Reporter

I'm not the kind of person who particularly enjoys navigating my way through sweaty crowds in order to have a conversation consisting of yelling into each other's ears, struggling to be heard over the music. Despite this, it seems that the majority of my mating rituals, as a semi-new lesbian, have been reduced to exactly this. Since realizing that women are more my speed, I've had to sacrifice the cute romantic hypotheticals that never seemed too impossible in the "straight" world.

I bump into someone at the grocery store and proceed to have a conversation about our favourite snacks. Is she smiling at me because she likes me or because she thinks she's made a new friend? "Yeah, I'm really into baking. I bake for my boyfriend all the time." And there it is.

Flirting becomes this tentative game of "Is She, Isn't She?" where I try to guess a girl's sexuality by these unquantifiable characteristics that allows one to give off a gay "vibe". Chance encounters become set-ups and profile stalking, while spontaneity becomes uncertainty.

You may not have a funny story to tell your kids about how you met and you may have to risk a lot of "sorry, I'm not gay" before you hear "sure, I'd love to go out sometime" but this isn't to say that the girl you bump into in the grocery store won't bat for your team or that you should be wary canadian online pharmacy of approaching a girl for fear that she isn't into girls. But in my opinion, dating as a lesbian is a lot harder than dating as a heterosexual.

Tired of trying to craft the perfect message on PlentyOfFish or OKCupid, I sought out this year to meet someone in the real world, outside of sweaty nightclubs. It was then that I realized I had absolutely zero queer friends and that if I was going to meet any romantic interests on campus, I had to make some queer or queer-friendly friends. The first place I thought to start was McMaster Queer Students Community Center, located on the 2nd floor of the Student Center. My advice to all you newly out queer folk is to get involved with the QSCC. They have a lot of events, are very welcoming and you can meet lots of new queer friends and allies. Their annual Pride Week, which is happening this year on Nov. 4-8, is a great way to meet other people. Go out to the drag show and perform, or sing along to the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Once you've found your new friends, you could ask them to set you up. Just be wary of the traps that can happen if your friends are straight. My friends mean well, but once in a while I get the "oh my goodness, you two would totally hit it off" while talking about a girl that I have nothing in common with. Sometimes friends fail to remember that liking the same sex doesn't make you a match.

For the shy and socially awkward, online dating might actually be your preferred source of dating. It gives you a chance to construct the perfect message, backspacing and proofreading until you have the perfect amount of nonchalant while still taking an interest. PlentyOfFish and OKCupid are the two biggest dating sites out there for our age group.

If all else fails, try a LGBT* club/bar, or one that hosts lesbian nights. It may not be an ideal place to meet someone and make genuine connections but there's something comforting about knowing that the majority of people with you, are gay too.

Like any relationship, finding someone takes patience and confidence. Join things that interest you and maybe along the way, you'll find the right someone. It may be slightly harder, but it's not impossible. Try not to give up on those romantic ideas that you may have. The girl next door may be bisexual, that girl at the coffee shop may have a girlfriend, and the girl in your class may be lesbian and interested, but the most important thing is to put yourself out there.

By Edward Lovo

Funny story. I come home and my father is mowing the lawn. He stops to tell me that he'd like to speak with me. I start worrying. When my father needs to have a talk, something's up.

I'm waiting inside and he comes soon after, taking a seat next to me. He asks about school and how I'm doing. I answer him. But now I'm worried that something's up with school and somehow he knows something I don't. Change of topic.

My father mentions a couple of comments I made on Facebook to a dear friend of mine who left to Leicester to study law. One comment was “I miss you” on his wall. The other was on his profile picture, where he’s adorned in suit and tie, and I said, “Everything that I look for in a man. Dresses sharp and takes shit seriously.”

Immediately I knew. I begin laughing uncontrollably at the thought that my parents were worried that I was gay. My parents, my mother having just joined us, chuckle with relief and seek assurance from me that I'm not gay. I assure them. My parents are relieved and tell me that the each of them had sleepless night over the thought that I might be gay. My father goes so far as to say, “That would have been the worst thing that could have happened to me: to have of one of my sons turn out gay.” My father admonishes me for my Facebook comments, saying that people will misconstrue me as gay, carrying the obvious insinuation that that's bad.

Funny story? As you've gleaned from my anecdote, I'm a straight male; but I’m also an ally to the LGBTQ community. I found hilarity in my parents easily misconstruing my behaviour, but I also experienced deep disappointment in their reactions.

I wanted to get angry. I wanted to start an argument over how they neither should’ve been anxious nor relieved. I’ve already had so many arguments with my parents turn sour over similar issues. But I didn’t feel like taking up arms with my parents that day. “Save it for another day,” I thought. This ‘humorous’ incident was bound to turn into one for reflection.

I kept relating this anecdote to friends and many had a good laugh. But one friend expressed their preference for having a straight child over a gay child. My friend insisted that I’d also prefer to have a straight child, though I had to correct him and say that, for myself, it would not matter - I already have a daughter, the light of my world, whose very name is a flower and of peace: Violeta de la Paz, almost 4 years old. I said to him that if my daughter was to approach me for a talk, with an air of gravity, and if she was to then tell me she’s gay, I'd say to her, “Whew! And I thought you were going to tell me you're religious!”

The reason typically cited for those who claim to not be homophobic, yet still prefer that their child to be straight, is that it's easier for child-rearing. There's truth to that. Parents of gay children have to deal with their children facing hardships just because of their sexual orientation in addition to the regular hardships of parenting.

Parents may even face some of their own hardships in virtue of being parents of gay children by other parents or other adults. However - and this is what’s important - this is something that society needs to change, not the child. The hardships that parents of gay children and gay children themselves have to face is not of their own doing, but of society's.

In connection with this, there is a myth that Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium gives in praise of Love. There was a time when there were three kinds of humans: ones that were totally male, totally female, or the androgynous kind, half male and half female.

In these times the humans provoked the wrath of Zeus for having attacked the gods and were thus split in half to diminish them in their power by Zeus. Love, for Aristophanes, was the search for one's other half: “And so, when a person meets the half that is his very own, whatever his orientation, whether it's two young men or not, then something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don't want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment.”

This reflected the Greek ethos of sexuality: it was taken for granted that one's 'other half' might as well be of the same sex. While we must acknowledge that Aristophanes' myth does not address the entire spectrum of sexual orientation - nor takes into account gender identity - it shows that society can be different because it has been different.

There was a time when society did not chastise persons for falling in love with one of the same sex; it was acknowledged as a possibility. Whereas in today's society, that one has a preference for straight over gay children is symptomatic of the homophobia with which society is diseased. I, for one, refuse to be diagnosed, and I acknowledge that society needs to be cured of this disease and that the child is healthy, regardless of society's ill condition. Society needs to change. Not the child. Let my daughter turn out to be gay and I'll express my fury at the adversity my daughter faces; at adversity, this disease, not my daughter. Let my child be. You change.