Jessie Lewthwaite is a rare masc-lesbian swimming in a sea of femme sapphics. So what’s a masc-attracted girl to do?
Walking down the stairs into the basement club, I am confronted with a sea of wall-to-wall femmes. This was one of Auckland’s rare queer women-who-love-women (WLW) nights.
The crowd skewed younger, which was understandable since it was a nightclub, but I was also shocked by how femme everyone was. Long hair, nails, and eyelashes as far as I could see. I vaguely wondered if I’d gotten my nights wrong and if this was a Taylor Swift tribute show. The only other two obviously masc-presenting people I could see in the crowd both had looks on their faces like they had won lotto. It seemed that if you were a femme-for-masc girl out that night, you didn’t get many choices, so let the Hunger Games begin!
If lesbian TikTok or Instagram hasn’t shown you about the masc-shortage we are experiencing, then your algorithm is broken! It’s everywhere and has even been legitimised beyond the meme with queer WLW dating app Her offering masc-presenting people a free, lifelong membership to try and balance the app and meet demand. So beyond the silly internet fun, is there actually a masc shortage?
Firstly, I need to address the fact that there are some transphobic undertones to this. The fear perpetuated by TERFS (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) is that masc lesbians are declining because we are being brainwashed into transitioning because it’s ‘easier’ than being lesbian. This is, of course, completely bonkers nonsense. Masc is about presentation, not gender identity. Don’t make me show you my PowerPoint on this, because I have one and I will!
The majority of the WLW community has come to embrace transmasculine and non-binary identities as part of the community. Whoever had the idea that someone could ‘transition out of the dating pool’ has clearly never met a pansexual.
I’m reminded of the meme of the straight girl on TikTok who is looking for a guy who works in finance, with a trust fund, who is 6’5 with blue eyes. Interestingly, smarter people than me have crunched the numbers on this, and let’s just say the straights are having their own shortage. You’d be lucky to find even one single man in all of New Zealand who meets these requirements.
I mention that because when you do start to feel a shortage, is when you have all the normal preferences and then add masc to that. Lesbe honest, we don’t have a massive dating pool to begin with, so if you want someone with their shit together who is responsible, trustworthy, wants/doesn’t want kids and has any other desirable physical/personal traits as well as being masc, well, now the dating pool is a shot glass! Hopefully, it’s filled with tequila, cause, girl, you’re gonna need it!
So if you are a hopeless, masc-attracted person reading this, here is my advice: redefine ‘masc’. If all a girl has to do is throw a snapback on over her zero fade to impress you, you need to raise your standards. Masc isn’t a haircut or a button-down shirt or even wearing men’s boxers. It’s a vibe. Don’t let a toxic masc ruin your life because there is a shortage. And to the femmes, short mascs are still mascs! Love to my short kings, I got your back.
