GO.GO Women's Festival Line Up & Arrival of Candy Bar Girls For 2012

Last year I went along to the GO.GO women's festival along with 200 other women from Brighton & Hove to join thousands of females from across the UK. We genuinely had a great time and the moment the dates were announced for 2012 myself, the girlfriend and the same friends that went together last year booked the time off from work without hesitation.

Me, having a good time last year at GO.GO

For those that didn't go to the festival , you may have got a taster of the GO.GO style if you attended Brighton Pride in 2011 where GO.GO and Zhoosh, the LGBT Brighton Network I run teamed up together to run the Women's Performance Tent where GO.GO showcased their abilities at attracting the best (and sexiest!) of UK female talent for their stage line-ups, It was a huge success and the tent packed the whole day.

Why Lesbians Should Celebrate Valentine's Day

The shops are brimming with hearts, roses and sickly sweet sentiment reminding us that Valentine's day is nearly upon us and providing plenty of reminders to where I was a year ago with the ending of yet another relationship. Far from Cupid firing his bow to bring romance it seems his bow is laced with something far more toxic when in my direction, for Valentine's has become synonymous with heartache and the anniversary of my relationships ending.

The new girlfriend announced pretty soon after anything red started appearing in the shops that she "doesn't do Valentine's" in a disdainful tone that said this was not up for debate and booked herself a holiday skiing for the week. So I've had little option but to settle for the fact that I won't be celebrating Valentine's this year either.

It's a hallmark holiday that fills me with a certain foreboding dread, but yet as a soppy romantic I enjoy having a day devoted to love, spending time making a lovey-dovey card and doing something special with your partner - just a shame it falls in February when we're all suffering from SAD and on a come down from Christmas and New Year.

The new girlfriend is not the first in my life to say it's all nonsense and I've equally had girlfriends with whom I've not celebrated our annual anniversary (the philosophy being, why celebrate like it's an achievement to reach X years together if you plan on staying together forever). I've also known couple's that do not buy each other gifts for Christmas and birthdays, pooling money instead to complete home improvements and renovations or to save up for large items such as cars, holidays and entertainment systems.

Lesbian bed death is not just a myth for lesbians in long term relationships. It is well recorded just from conversations with mates that lesbians have less sexual intimacy as relationships progress and (research showing) less than other types of relationships. Figures for the last five years for civil-partnership dissolvement in the UK show lesbian couples are twice as likely as gay men to separate (1.6% of formalised gay male relationships have been dissolved, compared with a dissolution rate of 3.3% for lesbian partnerships)

Cynics say that Valentine's Day is artificial and we should be taking time to do something special for our loved ones throughout the year, not just on these 'commercially' created days. But they can also act as a reminder to put our troubles and busyness aside and dedicate time to the person that we can often take most for granted. If that means using Valentine's as an opportunity to buy a new 'toy' to maintain or re-ignite intimacy or doing something to keep the spark there, then that for me is reason enough to celebrate and not be cynical - that's if Cupid hasn't laced his bow again!

Shit Straight Girls Say.... to Lesbians

Doing the rounds around my les-bi friends on Facebook is the following video that I just have to share as I couldn't stop laughing.

Put together by Laura Catlow, singer, writer and musician from Blackpool, this is a parody of Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls, which was a parody of Shit Black Girls Say, which was a parody of Shit Girls Say!

I think this tickled my funny bone as I have a number of lovely straight female friends, but have heard just about all the following innocently and naively spoken from their lips!

You can find more information about Laura Catlow on her website http://flavors.me/lauracatlow and follow her on Twitter @catlowman.

Dyke Drama - There's No Avoiding It In A Lesbian World

Love it or hate it, they can’t be avoided. Dyke dramas are part of the lesbian world and culture, and we seem to thrive on them. The urban dictionary describes it as ‘the constant challenges and sometimes strife affecting lesbians, due to affairs and gossip’. 

Walk into the lesbian pub, club night or party and you are confronted with girls having heated arguments and bystanders caught in the middle. Being able to keep out of dyke drama is the biggest challenge as when they happen they act like a tornado sucking everyone and everything into their path.

I’ve been embroiled in my own fair share as a result of friendship disputes, relationship break-ups, affairs, jealousy, group dynamics, over zealous loyalty, drug use and alcohol consumption.  It doesn’t matter where you go either: Brighton, London, Sydney or New York, town or village, within an hour of meeting a group of gay girls you will know who’s welcome to the party and who’s not, who’d ‘better not show up’, who’s the outcaste of the moment, who’s sleeping with who, who’s got a drink problem and who you should avoid getting close too. 

At the last party I went to, upon mentioning who I had my candy-eyes upon, I was told in no uncertain terms to ‘back-off’; it seemed I wasn’t the only one interested. The same individual then challenged me in a competition-like challenge, but I declined saying I was not into duelling over a girl and swiftly moved my attention elsewhere. I was seeking an easy drama-less one night stand, not the opposite.

Party in full swing and beneath all the joviality was a can of worms waiting to be unleashed. Someone’s stormed off feeling intimidated – something to do with having come onto the (ex) wife of someone else, behaviour that wasn’t welcomed. Meanwhile the civil partnered couple are coming onto others and one is caught snogging my best mate. It wasn’t long before all hell had broken loose and dyke drama's were exploding everywhere! 

Out celebrating New Years Eve’s with 200 women in the same venue, it was inevitable that at least one dyke drama was never going to be far away as the celebrations took place.  I had a great time, but at midnight there were fireworks not just in the sky overhead. A friend of a friend has kissed a girl that wasn’t her girlfriend. Witnessed, tears and arguments now follow and the friends who should be toasting the start of 2012 are instead now caught in the middle as they are left to console, support and unravel events.  I’m relieved to not be involved, though disappointed my friend (understandably) has to leave to attend to her distraught friend. 

Regardless of the reasons for them, dyke drama is part and parcel of my world. It’s about being a woman and it’s about being a lesbian, it’s about the friendships we share and the relationships we have.  There is no avoiding it if you're in the lesbian world.

Kissing Your Best Friend

Down the pub and over a pint a friend was recounting how after a recent drunken night out with her best-mate they’d ended up snogging.  Laughing about it she goes on to tell me, “but we quickly realised that no, there was nothing there.  It’s OK though”, she goes on in response to my worried expression about her friendship, “we’ve just put it in the past and forgotten about it”. 

It’s not an unfamiliar tale and one that most lesbians have experience of, usually from a night out and with varying outcomes and consequences.  

I’ve kissed my best mate. It was during a messy drunken game of ‘Truth or Dare’ with a bunch of girlz that we knew. Nearly everyone had kissed someone during the game and kissing my best mate was the easier option when it came to my turn.  “Urghhhh” my mate squeals as we lock lips. “It’s like kissing my sister!” 

We put it down to an experience we didn’t need to repeat; just like my friend I was now in the pub with had.  I’ve never known anyone to lose their best mate over a drunken kiss unless it was a straight girl or their kiss led to a drunken something else that’s harder to‘forget’. 

It can also lead to a ‘complicated’ relationship. You are such great mates, you have fun times, you share everything, you have a connection, know each other better than anyone else... it seems logical to get it together, you practically are anyway!

But love has a funny way of changing things. Who we are with our mates is not who we are in relationships. Suddenly there are boundaries that were previously not there as certain behaviours that were acceptable as friends are not acceptable as a couple. It now feels like a nagging relationship as you re-adjust to being together in a new way whilst your best friend may seem like someone who has gone from your life.  

Kissing your best-mate may seem like a good idea when intoxicated, but the outcome could well turn out to be your worst hangover.  

Losing Friendships When THEY Gain Lovers

We were like the three musketeers with a quest that involved misadventure and women, just like in the story. Together we too had duelled, had love interests and affairs, consoled and had to rescue each other from many a messy situation.

We pub crawled, partied, clubbed and discoed together nearly every week, Thurs-gay night, Friday night and often Saturday night too. We made the effort to go to any sporadic women-only events that were on, even if they weren’t to our own taste. 

At times we’d be in side-splitting laughter as we commiserated, more often than not on another diabolical night out, whilst at other times we went home feeling more depressed and frustrated than when the evening began, at a loss to why it felt like we were the only ones out plus a handful of the same few familiar faces propping up the same bars. 

“Susan, promise me that when I get in a relationship, tell me if I turn into one of those lesbians that disappear, forget they have friends, never go out and are inseparable from their partner in the cave. I never want to be like that!”

Where and What is the Lesbian Moral Code with Exes?

I recently discovered that two of my exes are sleeping together. I’d sadly had a crystal ball about it from when I first introduced them to each other and they seemed to get along a ‘bit too well’. With an ex that would rather chat with your girlfriend than you, the inevitable was blatantly obvious the moment my relationship ended.

Posting a status update to friends on Facebook about my distress at this news, it became evident that I was not the only one to have experienced this situation of ex-partners getting it on.