Scared To Ask

I am a 15-year-old lesbian. I love a girl who is a class senior to me. The girl doesn’t know about me. How do I approach her? I really love her and I think she likes me, but I am dead scared to talk to her about it.
–Scared To Ask

If I were anywhere else in the world, I would tell you to go for it and let her how you feel. Maybe she’ll reciprocate. But this is India, where even lesbian-identified women who are of age can find themselves thrown out of school, placed under house arrest by their families, forced into marriage (possibly to some joker like the guy in the letter above), thrown into jail, or involuntarily committed to psychiatric care for expressing their desire for other women. You’re not legally an adult, so the risks are even greater for you. Now, I have no idea what your family or her family is like. Maybe everyone is loving and supportive or maybe they’re all monsters. Who’s to say? But I’ll tell you this: you do not want to have the full machinery of family pressure, social censure, and state-sanctioned collusion crashing down on your head at this time. You’re too young and vulnerable. Don’t tell this girl about your feelings right now.

Instead, I suggest you get in touch with a good therapist or one of the counselors at an LGBTQ support organization. Sangama, in Bangalore, is a great place to start. Talk through your options with them and start building a support network for yourself. Nothing is ever accomplished by being hasty, so make a plan for finishing your education and becoming financially independent as soon as possible. At least then you’ll have resources you can access when you’re an adult and your parents hit the roof about you being a lesbian. It’s a tough world we live in and you’ve gotta be savvy if you want to get through it reasonably unscathed. Don’t get carried away by your feelings in the moment and start planning for your future as a strong, proud lesbian woman. Good luck!

Lezzies For Marriage

I am male, aged 47, and a bachelor. It’s true. I have always wanted to marry a lesbian, although I cannot find one. Am I abnormal?
–Love The Lezzies

You’ve made a point of emphasizing the fact that you are 47 and a bachelor. However, you have made no mention of being gay, which is the usual reason why men ask me about marrying lesbian women. So I’m going to assume you’re straight unless you correct me. Now to the question at hand. Are you abnormal? Maybe so, maybe no. Are you a loser? Absolutely.

A lot of straight men (and lot of straight women, for that matter) get off on the idea of “lesbian” women doing their “lesbian” things with each other. I put that in quotes because they’re not actually interested actual, honest-to-God same-sex desiring women, but because what they really want to see is straight-acting women who are (in heteronormative imaginings) such nymphomaniacs that they’ll have sex with anyone, even (gasp!) another woman. Your letter isn’t really about getting know women with same-sex attractions because the fantasy isn’t about women and their desires at all—it’s about women performing a simulacrum of desire for straight men’s viewership and consumption. V.N. Deepa, a founding member of the Sahayatrika collective for same-sex desiring women in Kerala has plenty to say on this subject: “The cynical might say that the publicity that Sahayatrika has received has also been propelled by the commodification and hyper-sexualization of lesbian identity…The invisibility of women-loving women in daily life is countered by constructions of the ‘lesbian’ in the popular imagination; and a proportion of our (hotline) callers seem to imagine a lesbian not to be a woman with same-sex attractions, but instead a woman who will have sex with anyone. And our efforts to create safe, women-centered spaces are at risk of being overwhelmed by male sexual harassment/desire.” (That quote, by the way, is from Deepa’s fabulous essay titled “Queering Kerala: Reflections on Sahayatrika”, and you can find it in the 2005 anthology Because I Have A Voice: Queer Politics In India, edited by Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bhan. Holla peeps!) I have no idea why you want to marry a lesbian woman, but your reasons seem more sinister than honest, so for everyone’s sake, I hope you never find one.

Slipping Into A Wormhole

I’m a 17-year-old girl from Kerala. I have a friend on Orkut who is a few years older than me. He is one of my best friends on Orkut and in real life, even though we’ve never met each other. When I’m talking with him, I feel the presence of a close friend, but when we’re not talking I start thinking that maybe I’m in love with him. During direct communications we act like good friends, but inside my heart I feel a special kind of attachment towards him that may be love. I don’t know that whether he loves me or not. He doesn’t have a girlfriend and he sometimes says that he would like to meet me in person. Even if there was something romantic there, there would problems because we are from two different religions. So I don’t think it would be a successful love. But still I love him. I already said that this love feels like a good friendship when I’m talking to him on the phone, and that’s why I can’t say about it to him. If he loves me then what should I do? Our love would not be a success story. How do I know whether he loves me or not? Or maybe you could give me a good suggestion to control my mind because I’m always thinking about him when I’m studying, eating, walking… even in my dreams. What do I do?
–Is This Love Or Not?

Jesus, what a hot mess this letter is. “I love him when I’m not talking to him, I can’t get him out of my mind but we’re only friends when we talk, I want him to love me but our religions would make our relationship unsuccessful, I hope he doesn’t love me, actually I hope he does love me,” and so on. As I was reading it I could feel myself slipping into a wormhole in the time-space continuum and slowly losing my grip on reality: When I came to, I found the stone tablet broken on the floor and my chisel stabbed into my cheek. Thanks a bunch.

First off, I don’t see what the religious question has to do with anything unless you happen to be some kind of fundamentalist or you think your folks would give you hell for dating outside the tribe. Let go of that nonsense. That said, who cares whether he loves you or not? Who cares whether you love him or not? You’ve never even met before, so what you’re feeling isn’t love anyway. It’s silly, 17-year-old infatuation. It’s as ridiculous as claiming you’ve fallen in love with a movie star. If the knowledge that you’re being a melodramatic adolescent doesn’t help “control your mind” and snap you out of it, I don’t know what will.

Rules For Being Human

I am an 18-year-old guy. I recently found a girl on Orkut who I think is my soulmate. We like the same things and we have the same thoughts. We are really friendly. We chat at least twice a week and I’m really interested in her. How do I make sure she is not already committed?
–Worried About Online Love

You know, it’s crazy what the kids get up to these days on the Internet. Makes me glad that I’m still hammering out my column with a stone tablet and a chisel. Look, kid, you can’t possibly know that this girl is your soulmate from talking to her twice a week on some lame networking website. You can’t even be so sure that she really is a girl, and not just some 45-year-old overweight guy with breathing problems and a rash. The question you should be asking here is not whether she’s already committed, but whether you know her well enough to consider the possibility of getting together in the first place. And you can only find out the answer to that by meeting in person and hanging out like real humans.

That being said, there are some basic rules of safety that everyone should follow when meeting up with a stranger from the Internet. 1.) Always meet in a crowded, well-lit place, and during the day. 2.) Let a friend know who you’re meeting, where you’re meeting, and how long you’ll be. Ideally, you should have the friend come along and hide out incognito-style wherever you’re meeting, just to keep an eye on things. 3.) Keep a cell phone and some cash for a rickshaw handy in case you need to make a quick getaway. (No sense hanging around with no money if the other person turns out to be a dork or psychotic killer.) 4.) Never give out any identifying details about where you live.

You follow those rules, and you should live long enough to figure out whether you actually like this girl enough to hunt woolly mammoths together, or whatever it is kids get up when dating these days.

Dating Older Ladies

I am a 22-year-old man. I am trying to date an older lady. Can you guide me on how to approach her? She is about 32. Thank you.
–Awaiting Your Advice

I can’t really help you if that’s all I have to go on. I have no idea in what context you met this woman, how long you’ve known her, whether she’s shown any signs of interest, or really anything at all that would be helpful in framing a response. A request, gentle readers: when you send me questions, please try to give me as many contextualizing details as possible. Thanks a bunch!