Reason women are ditching men to date women

Star Natalie Bassingthwaighte’s big news that she’s found love with a woman points to an uncomfortable truth, says Nadia Bokody.

OPINION

Men as a group offer very little to women.

I say this as someone who, contrary to popular opinion, wasn’t treated terribly by a man before I came out as a lesbian.

Though that’s not the story we’re used to hearing.

Women who leave men for other women are routinely framed as “bitter”, “burned”, or “jumping on a bandwagon” – incidentally, all comments I read this week under coverage of Natalie Bassingthwaighte’s announcement she’s in a relationship with a woman.

Natalie Bassingthwaighte has revealed she’s in a relationship with a woman. Picture: Sam Tabone/Getty Images for & Juliet Australia

Bassingthwaighte joins a growing list of high profile women who’ve faced public scrutiny for coming out later in life. Just last month, One Tree Hill actor Sophia Bush was romantically linked with women’s soccer star Ashlyn Harris. A few months earlier, comedian Rebel Wilson confirmed she was in a same-sex relationship with fashion designer Ramona Agruma, and last year Netflix reality TV star Chrishell Stause famously revealed she was dating non-binary Australian singer G Flip, who she’s since married.

Fashion designer Ramona Agruma and Australian actor Rebel Wilson. Picture: Patricia DE MELO MOREIRA / AFP

G Flip and Chrishell Stause attend the 2023 ARIA Awards. Picture: Hanna Lassen/Getty Images

The fact all these women are conventionally attractive and femme is especially significant. Because if Bassingthwaighte and her peers weren’t appealing to men, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

We don’t tend to have a problem accepting women who present as more masculine or “butch” as being gay. When the tomboy with a shaved head comes out as a lesbian, we’re unfazed. She doesn’t dress or wear her hair in a way that appeals to the male gaze, so her sexuality fits neatly into the stereotype of what we’ve been taught a gay woman should look like (a woman a man wouldn’t be interested in having sex with).

We’re far more suspicious of women who can traditionally attract men but still want to date women. It shatters the narrative that the only women who’d willingly choose to be unattached to men are ugly spinsters destined to live alone with their cats (whoever proposed cats are worse than men clearly never read the latest HILDA data indicating women who cohabit with male partners double their domestic load and increase their stress levels).

Add in that these women are all incredibly professionally and financially successful in their own right, with an already unlimited supply of attention available to them, and it takes more than a few mental gymnastics to follow the “she’s just doing it for fame/money/to be relevant” logic.

Nadia Bokody realised she was gay at 36. Picture: Instagram

The belief women are essentially invisible until we’re chosen by a man is so ingrained in us, we’ll sooner eat up the farcical assertion so-called “woke media” is “making everyone gay” than considering the possibility women can experience vast joy without men in their lives.

And I say “farcical” because the “everybody’s becoming gay” propaganda is so wildly inaccurate, it borders on comedy.

In a survey of 30 countries, market research firm Ipsos found an average of just nine per cent of people identify as LGBTQ+. In Australia, a mere four per cent of adults identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual.

I don’t think anybody at a party where 96 guests had straight hair and four had perms would come to the conclusion perms were the next big thing and immediately book in with their hairdresser to get one.

There aren’t more queer people around today; there are simply fewer negative consequences involved in being openly queer than there was a decade ago (and there’ll hopefully be fewer still in another decade).

It’s not a coincidence Millennials and Gen Zs report higher numbers of LGBTQ+ people than our predecessors – we’re the only two generations who haven’t had to face the criminalisation of our sexual identities.

We’re also the first generations to engage in discourse around the construct of “compulsory heterosexuality” or “comphet” – the pervasive societal expectation women should be attracted to men.

Though the term first came about in the 1980 essay, ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence’, it only really took off in 2018 thanks to internet culture, when an anonymous Tumblr user posted a 31-page document called ‘Am I a Lesbian?’, explaining how comphet had misled her into thinking she was straight.

The now ubiquitous online document clarifies, “a desire to be attractive to men”, which is impressed upon women from adolescence, isn’t the same thing as having a physical attraction to men, though we’re taught to conflate the two.

After I unpacked how comphet had affected me, it was painfully clear I’d spent years confusing my desire to be wanted by men with sexual attraction, which means dating a man again hasn’t been a consideration for me since.

But for many women, coming out doesn’t necessarily mean factoring men out of their sexuality. “Queer” is becoming a more common label as a term that encompasses a range of sexual identities under the LGBTQ+ umbrella.

When Chrishell Stause revealed her relationship with G Flip in 2022 during a reunion episode of Selling Sunset, the Netflix reality show she stars in, she hinted at the term, explaining gender didn’t factor into her attractions.

“I heard people talk about these things and they’re like, ‘I knew from a young age.’ That’s not me. I’m just, I’m very open to good energy,” said Stause.

In fact, none of the high profile women who’ve revealed their queer romances in the last year have publicly labelled themselves, so it’s impossible to say whether men still factor into their sexuality, but what’s clear is, the old joke, “Treat your girlfriend right or a lesbian will” holds water – gay women are outperforming men sexually, emotionally and relationally.

A study that included over 52,000 sexually active adults confirmed lesbians give women far more orgasms than straight men do. It also found no other group of people has less orgasmic sex than women who sleep with men.

And a report published in the Journal Of Lesbian Studies shows gay women divide household labour equally, while women in heterosexual relationships routinely take on the lion’s share (a Pew Research Centre study found this is true even when they out-earn their male partners).

Being queer isn’t a consequence of being mistreated by men or a trend, but for women who are discovering they’re attracted to multiple genders, opting out of dating men is a deliberate choice made to honour their sexual and emotional needs. Because, truly, anything a man can do, a queer woman can do better.

I think G Flip put it best when they sung, “I understand, ‘cause I get you emotionally … I know how you think, and what you like, and what your body needs … I’m not what you planned, but I’ll be your man”.

Follow Nadia Bokody on Instagram and YouTube for more.