Tensions with bisexual friends
1980
“But a couple of things happened that really disturbed me. I shared
a house with a bisexual friend and was very friendly with and babysat
endlessly for her small daughters. She was appalled at where I’d ended
up politically and was quite hostile and there was a real shift in her
attitude to my being around her kids. I’d lived with them since they
were little and we’d all have a bath together, if I was babysitting it
was a good way of calming them down and we’d all pile in and out – I
remember her getting quite anxious about me having a bath with them
when before there’d never been an issue. I interpreted the problem to
be because I had decided to be a political lesbian. She wasn’t uptight
about relationships between women, but a lot of those women were still
married to their blokes. I used to call them the ‘wife-swappers’
because they all had affairs with each other. Only one woman from that
group was a lesbian and I used to feel really sorry for her, none of
them were going to commit to anything other than their relationships
with men. Those women really struggled with me being a political
lesbian and became much less friendly to me, I was quite surprised”.
Contributed by: Trisha McCabe, 51