helenic

Here's a third lot, then: I don't go out to straight bars (by which I mean meat-markety scoring-type pubs, rather than gay pubs or old-man's-pubs, which are nice and respectful) with girls I am kissing any more, because of the reaction. The first time I noticed this, I was kissing a girl in a rocker bar (hence, I thought, a slightly alternative place), and a man got out his camphone and started taking photos of us. The second time I tried the experiment, completely strange men plonked themselves down at our table and stared, in some cases for half an hour at a time. In both cases, the men clearly thought that they were entitled to co-opt our sexuality for their own sexual pleasure, and that two women kissing was a spectacle put on for men, rather than something that women might do autonomously for their own enjoyment, and that might deserve the same respect due to a straight couple.

I've also had cars stop and scream abuse at me for holding hands with a girl, in Berlin and in Dublin, though I have to say it happens rarely. As biascut says, though, anecdotal evidence suggests that femme women get much less stick than butch women do. My butch lesbian sister wouldn't dream of kissing another girl in public, because of the abuse she has got in the past.