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LESBIAN LIFE IN LAWRENCE BY JACQUELINE LENA
Her index finger nervously taps the computer mouse as her brown eyes glaze over the screen in contemplation. After what seems to be 15 minutes, with one swift click she sends the e-mail, outing herself to a coworker. At 22, Sarah Burris faces the same fear she had at 16 coming out to herself, a high school teacher and friend turned lover - acceptance.
The Lawrence junior strongly supports gay activism and is treasurer of the University of Kansas' Queers and Allies, but she still sometimes finds it difficult to tell people she's a lesbian. Burris' sexual orientation is even a secret to one of the people who means most to her, her grandfather. Keeping it hidden from him is hard but she says she will tell him when the time is right. "Sometimes I feel like 'how can he not know?'" Burris says. "I think he'd be really accepting within time, but it's really scary."
While she's proud of her homosexuality, she hates the awkwardness and assumptions that come with it. Burris still isn't sure when to tell people she's gay and says it's prevented her from joining a sorority and getting involved in other campus activities. She says it's common for people to think she's talking about a boyfriend when she refers to an ex, and she still hasn't overcome the fear of asking if a girl she's interested in is a lesbian.
Difficulty defining lesbian relationships inspired author Mo Brownsey's Is It a Date or Just Coffee? The Gay Girl's Guide to Dating, Sex & Romance. Brownsey says it's difficult for gay women to know if they're going to a movie as a friend or a love interest. She says when two lesbians do connect, there's pressure to make that last. "We're so socialized to associate great sex with love that we have to make great lustful affairs into relationships," she says.
Burris has gone head over heels a few times while at the University but hasn't had any serious relationships other than her fantasy one with Ellen DeGeneres, whose daytime talk show she tapes daily
to watch after work. Burris says most of Lawrence's lesbians are in relationships and jokes that every few years they all break up and shift around to another girl or eventually end up getting back together with their ex. "If you're not careful you can miss the shift and end up being the single girl again," Burris says. "I always miss the shift; I think I usually sleep in those days."
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Stereotypes and stigmas cause discomfort for Burris when she's dating. In public and even around friends she's had problems being affectionate with her ex partner. Discomfort is a way of life that Burris plans on ending through her gay activism. She says her goal is to make her role as an activist obsolete, freeing gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transvestites from social barriers. She says with full confidence that those changes will happen within her lifetime.
The lesbian scene is misconceived with notions of "flannel bars" and softball games, Burris says, but she thinks that all lesbians don't fit the confinement of the femme/butch roles. Her black, thick-rimmed glasses and long dyed red hair are evidence of the unfitting stereotype. "We don't hate men nor do we want to be men," Burris says. "Shocking as it may be, some of us have flannel and lipstick and wear them both at the same time." Burris says she didn't become a lesbian because she can't get a man and hates that people think she just needs the right man to come along.
Lesbians are seen as long-nailed and lipsticked for men, Brownsey says. She says unlike gay men, women aren't a threat to male homophobes because they are erotic. Heterosexual women oppositely see lesbians as sweet and sexless. Brownsey says that women are not seen to be sexual on their own, but rather that it takes men to make that association. "If one woman is butch then there's that gender threat," she says.
—Jacqueline Lenart, Jayplay writer, can be reached at jlenart@kansan.com.
thursday. december 4, 2003