An often-cited report by Human Rights Watch in 2009 spoke with only 10 members of the LGBT+ community and only one lesbian was interviewed. The BBC has spoken to dozens.

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I settle for some Kelly Clarkson, and after my screechy but enthusiastic rendition of “Since U Been Gone,” five (!) different women approach me, complimenting my performance. One of them tells me her friend thinks I’m really cute, and could she buy me a drink?

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Initially her mother took it badly. But as the days passed she began to ask more questions. Leila’s father was more supportive than she expected. I wasn’t into it,” she says, “I thought maybe it was because the guy wasn’t cute. So I dumped him and started dating a cute guy.” I would try to separate my feelings for Lynette from my feelings about wanting someone or something different in general — out of a desperate desire to feel some sort of control over my choices — and concede that was pretty much impossible. According to Internet World Stats only 4.4% of Burundi’s 11 million-strong population have access to the internet, and almost all of them are based in Bujumbura. But when he looked at her quizzically, she says the full realisation of who she is hit her. I am a lesbian, Leila told herself.

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I actively choose to identify as a lesbian and a dyke, as well as a queer. I have found love and community unlike anything else I’ve ever known in what still exists of lesbian culture, despite all external (and, TERF-wise, internal) attempts to exterminate it: the art, the literature, the physical spaces. Plus, most importantly (and most obviously), the word “lesbian” quite literally describes what I am: a woman who loves women in both a feminist way and a super-gay way. We started talking,” says Niya, “Then one day, in the middle of a deep conversation, she turned to me and said, ‘I like women’.” A couple days later — after getting my serious lesbian conversations out of the way — I was about 14 rum punches deep and drunk-dancing on a catamaran.I come from a queer universe where traditional butch/femme identities seem old-school and retrograde, second-wavey, practically heteropatriarchal. There’s a lot wrong with that perspective — for one thing, a lot of the modern queers who shit on butch/femme dynamics aren’t from the working class, where those identities were born — but it’s one I still sympathize with, especially as someone who’d previously been hesitant to claim femme identity as my own. Throughout the trip, Matie and Jamie would have a number of tearful conversations about trans inclusion with some older passengers who refused to accept trans women as their fellow sisters. But they also got many women to reconsider their more middle-of-the-road views on trans inclusion. “Those are the people who matter,” Jamie would later tell me, recalling her latest conversions over coffee in the cafeteria. I was scared of so many things, and worried about, as usual, lesbian stereotypes — moving too fast, feeling too much. And I said so. It was one of our talents that week: saying absolutely everything that was on our minds, and processing until we felt we couldn’t possibly process anymore — at least, of course, until the next night. After being hit, one woman went to the police station only to be told that “the man who hit you deserves a prize, he was right to beat you up”. The city, with its colonial-era Art Deco buildings surrounding a market, a football stadium and places of worship, sits on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.

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I would sleep in Alia’s bed that night and accidentally pat her butt in my sleep, my mind clearly deluding my body into believing I was still on the cruise with Lynette. Alia would very nicely not be weird about it.Many members of the group say they have experienced violence at the hands of family members who became suspicious about their sexuality. They meet once a month, in different places. Sometimes in public but mostly behind closed doors. Most of them are wearing jeans and T-shirts in various colours, patterns and styles. Starring and co-written by Jennifer Westfeldt, Kissing Jessica Stein examines the life of Jessica, a woman in her late 20s who is fed up with a monotonous desk job and dating life. On a whim she decides to answer a woman-seeking-woman personal ad in a newspaper. Kissing Jessica Stein offers an incredible portrayal of sexual fluidity, emotional self-discovery, and sexual exploration, but problems arise toward film’s end, when Jessica’s girl-loving side is threatened with becoming completely erased. While it seems that Jessica is probably bisexual, her partner tells her she’s not “gay enough” to be with a woman. Hopefully a remake will be able to get the nuances of sexual fluidity right. Rent it on Apple TV. The BBC messaged Niya to tell her that we would be using images of a violet to illustrate the memes. We chose the symbol - which differs vastly from the symbols the women use - because lesbian women in the 1900s were said to give violets to their girlfriends.

lesbian girlfriends passionately kissing and caressing two attractive lesbian girlfriends passionately kissing and

Two years later, Niya felt she had to tell one person in her immediate family. She chose one of her brothers. I planned to meet Dana in the ship lobby that morning so that we could wander around for a while before the event. When we set off into town together, she gently informed me that my whatever-it-was with Lynette had not gone unnoticed by the staff, who’d encouraged Dana to encourage me to spend more time speaking with other people and reporting on the ship’s endless entertainment options. We all formed one big circle, and the staffers got the ball rolling. First things first: How had we all heard about Olivia? By this point, I was — somewhat unintentionally — quite drunk. We started making out (I was still peeing) and almost right away, I began writing a goofy story about it in my head, thinking about how I’d relay the anecdote to my friends (“So I had sex in the bathroom of a catamaran???”). But there was another part of me that was very much not into it, especially when the makeout gave way to other things and people started banging on the bathroom door.

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Per the rules of our loose nonmonogamous agreement, I FaceTimed with my partner about what was happening on the cruise, first telling them about the catamaran girl and then, in so many words, about Lynette. I suspected, even early on, that I was about to break our most important rule of all: Don’t fall in love with anybody else. These choices are homophobic,” I tell my new friend Dana. She’s technically my press handler, tasked with making sure I see the best that the tour operator, Olivia Travel, has to offer. So far, she’s more than delivered, but the weak karaoke selection — not Dana’s fault! — is a rare low point on a trip that, four days in, has already slowly but surely begun to change my life. My partner was patient and kind. But as time went on, they got frustrated — understandably — and they suggested, as a reparative measure, that we open up our relationship.