A straight girl enters the queer world...

[aishah]

i feel that the conversation on visibility is a bit off topic but relevant, and i can see both sides of it. for me, it isn't a huge deal, because i've always felt a lack of visibility regardless of who i've dated - so my feelings on invisibility are detached from my partner's id. i have a lot of complicated and difficult and upsetting emotions about invisibility. i hate being invisible. but i don't need or expect my relationship to make me visible (no queer relationship i've ever had has really made me more visible). i also don't think that stealth personally or in a relationship is a bad thing. i understand for some people their relationship is very much tied to their visibility. so i can see how those feelings might come up for them in their relationship.

for me i always id as a queer femme regardless of the gender and sexual orientation of the person i'm dating. my partner has talked about his feelings around struggling with wanting to be stealth and id as heterosexual but at the same time feeling more a sense of home in the queer community and in some ways id'ing as queer, though he is only attracted to femme women.

[Quintease]

I hate being invisible in the gay scene. I fought hard to be recognised as a lesbian, especially in my early years when lesbians would look at my long hair in distrust. Part of loving my husband was letting go of my need to be 'visible' and that hurt. Luckily he's still happy to be queer in queer spaces.

I don't have the same concerns with straight people or my family, they can think what they like. My husband is a man and my lesbian life is irrelevant when I'm with him, he's my heterosexual future.