Nothing helps a body unwind from a tiresome first week back at school like sex! Well, this isn’t sex, but it’s the second best thing: allow us to present the third installment in our new and improved BwogSex feature. The following contemplations by Kia Walton were written in response to a question left in our anonymized dropbox – Kia is not the sole writer for Bwogsex, but is our Queer Culture Bureau Chief. Send in your own questions, anecdotes, and ideas to BwogSex (anonymously!), and remember, the weather has changed: it’s time to get busy on the lawns!

This question is as problematic as it is interesting and I am grateful for the query. So… let’s dive in!

Firstly, a rewriting of this anonymous question is in order: “How easy is it to ‘turn’ a ‘desperate, straight’ Columbia girl?” It may seem unhelpful to add quotation marks, which seem only to lend themselves to ambiguous definitions, but I find them more helpful than the rigid preconceptions these words may inspire.

Let’s start with the term “turn.” Turning, in my opinion, is impossible. As a friend of mine succinctly put it, “either you have the desire or you don’t.” (That desire being sexual attention from and/or sexual activity with someone of the same sex).  I cannot “turn” a girl gay (God knows I’ve tried). I can, however, try to tap into the homosexual energy that I believe nearly every single person has (in varying amounts). I would only attempt to woo her with my charm (which usually just boils down to leaving the room when I rip one) and hope that it draws out what is already present. If the girl is receptive to me, it is not because I was able to install some sort of gay chip in her; it was already there, I just had the privilege of activating it.

Then there is this idea of desperation. To say that a Columbia girl must be “desperate” to engage in sexual activity with another girl is both offensive and convenient. Regarding the former, to assume that a straight-identified girl would only hook-up with a another girl when all other options have been extinguished is to assume that the queer-female community (to whom the question is directed) is the merely a receptacle for stale desire, meant for a straight man, but begrudgingly bestowed upon the vulturian vagitarians.  In truth, any straight-identified women explicitly and implicitly express their attraction to other women, and their intent, when there are other viable options.

By creating the context of desperation the question also reinforces the heteronormative and wholly asinine presumption that all girls like boys first and foremost. The truth is more of us are both receptors and producers of homosexual energy than we can recognize or would like to admit. Which is why calling same-sex sexual energy and activity an act of desperation is so convenient. It excuses the actions of the individual, making them a passive force in the goings on. She couldn’t help that there were no cute guys around, right? It’s as if saying homosexuality happened to her in that time, rather than she acted on her own homosexual energy.

That, clearly, completely complicates the idea of what “straight” is (along with all other sexual orientation terminology).  This stems from, I believe, the way in which we have qualified and categorized sexuality. As the PRIDE movement and the reclamation of queer culture took root to encourage positive ownership of sexual orientation, so too came the process of “coming out”. Those that are queer are encouraged to come out as an empowered this or proud that, but in doing this good and brave work, the categorization of sexual identity is perpetuated which does not always promote individual sexual identity. Far more limiting, however, is that because heterosexual culture does not encourage the creation of a hand tailored identity (like homosexuality often can), there are virtually all kinds of gay and just one kind of straight. As such, from what I can see, you get a whole lot of shades of gray waving white flags of heterosexuality.

But to answer the question, and to end, it is as hard to “turn” a “desperate, straight” girl as it is to fight any socialized consciousness that attempts to make something natural feel like something deviant. It is fighting an uphill battle for curiosity, for lust, or for love, and it is sometimes exhausting, sometimes embarrassing, but entirely worth it.