Illustration by Aditi Singh
A week ago, I went out with my friends, and a gorgeous woman flirted with me at the bar. I’ll confess — I panicked. I froze as her hands broke the touch barrier and trailed down my arms, across my shoulders, and around my waist.
On one hand, yes, I am an awkward bisexual who’s never learned how to flirt with women … but on the other hand, there’s that common stereotype that women who love women don’t know how to flirt. Have you ever heard of the joke “two lesbians sit at a bar complaining about being single and then walk out single?”
Why do WLW (women who love women) have trouble flirting with each other? Talia Homsey might have an answer.
Homsey is a Massachusetts-based filmmaker who has taken it upon herself to explore the topic of flirting within the WLW community. Homsey, who identifies as a lesbian, has worked on more than 30 films and is bringing that expertise to her next project: a series of interviews on queer women and how they flirt.
The project started when Homsey realized there was extremely limited research on the topic of queer flirting. Most research on how people flirt is conducted on straight people and follows heteronormative patterns. Homsey realized she could use her interest in directing, cinematography, and editing to pave the way in a niche field of study.
The interviews themselves were conducted at multiple locations across Massachusetts and depict seven queer women talking about their flirting experiences in front of a white backdrop. When prompted on the aesthetic choice of the white backdrop during an interview with F Newsmagazine, Homsey said it was because she wanted viewers to focus on the people — their mannerisms, their body language, their looks, etc. — the way one must do when flirting. The experience of watching the film becomes a meta-visual experience on the content.
“I found it interesting how every woman I interviewed struggled to figure out if a woman was flirting or just friendly. It’s not as obvious to flirt as you think.” Talia told F when asked what surprised her to find out during filming.
The interviews in the film begin with the question “Do you want to label your sexuality?” Then, Homsey proceeds to ask, “How do you know when a woman loves women?” and “Do you flirt differently based on how you present?”
The answers were fascinating.
For some people, labels are important because they provide the language and community necessary to explain an experience of sexual attraction. Some of the women easily identified themselves as lesbians, bisexual people, or simply queer. To others, labels are limiting—and it was no surprise to Homsey that some of the women chose not to label their attraction to other women.
For the second question, the women in the film responded that appearance is the main way they identify other queer people. Visual cues such as piercings, unique hairstyles (including brightly colored hair), and cuffed jeans act as coded signals for gayness. Once these women made their first approach, other cues such as music taste, or if the person knew someone in the LGBT community, helped them to determine if they could continue flirting. Appearance was also important when it came to who flirted first. In the last question that Homsey asked, masculine-presenting women mentioned that they felt they were expected to make the first move, as compared to feminine-presenting women. The women interviewed in the film felt they typically followed a heteronormative script in flirting, even within their queerness, and this brought them distress. One masculine presenting woman said she had never received flowers from her partners, and that she wanted to in order to feel more like a woman. Despite presenting masculine, she did not want to be defined by it.
Homsey mentioned that maintaining eye contact and lowering your tone of voice to a more sultry register can indicate a flirty intention rather than a friendly attraction … but even that is subjective. According to Elena Potapova’s research, the most common usage of nonverbal communication to convey flirtatious interest in other women among women is establishing and maintaining eye contact. Followed by touching behaviors and physical distance.
“It’s a fine line with flirting…you don’t want to make women uncomfortable, but how do you let them know you’re interested?” Homsey said.
Homsey believes the problem is not the individual, but that we live in a heteronormative society that boxes flirting into male and feminine roles and scripts. What is a script? Scripts are actions defined by cultural norms that guide behavior. In this case, heteronormativity. Therefore, queer flirting, despite being queer, follows our culture’s dominant narrative of gendered expectations because heteronormativity is the norm.
The effect of these flirting norms is that queer people feel limited by the roles they have to play while flirting. Some form of change in flirting, and therefore society, is necessary to allow queer people to live authentically within their romance.
So… how can one change the script? Homsey suggests better queer representation in media so that queer people can create and relearn new scripts. She mentioned the movie “Bottoms” (2023) as a huge win for queer people — as it is a funny queer movie that does not victimize queer people, nor does it center around the singular experience of coming out.
Homsey says she grew up with negative queer representation through movies like “Blue is the Warmest Color” (2013), where lesbians are stereotyped and oversexualized through the male gaze.
This comment made me think of a conversation I had with my friend, poet, and playwright (and F Newsmagazine editor) Katie Maclauchlan about the show “The Ultimatum: Queer Love” where we asked the question: Is bad representation better than no representation at all?
In the reality show “The Ultimatum: Queer Love” WLW couples swap partners in order to decide whether the original pairs want to get married or not. The show is full of drama that could lead to negative stereotypes of what it’s like to be queer.
“Damn, it’s nice to watch women try to navigate living together, children and family structures, finances, does-the-dog-sleep-on-the-bed, who does the dishes, etc. And besides, there aren’t really a lot of other queer reality dating shows. Until representation gets there, I’ll take it. For better or for worse,” said Maclauchlan.
Queer representation that shows the (as honest as can be) reality of flirting — including its stressors — can break the mold of what people think queer flirting is supposed to be.
Homsey said she does not endorse or promote dating shows and reality television as accurate queer representation because the shows are designed for entertainment and views, not to help these women date. Nevertheless, Homsey has the hope that people know not to trust Reality television as an accurate representation of the queer community.
From documentaries to reality television, real-world women flirting with women are starting to emerge on our screens, even if it’s a struggle to get that representation or to flirt at all.
So, if you are a woman, and your experience with flirting with other women has been rough, do not be hard on yourself. Most WLW struggle too. It’s part of the heteronormative system we live in and the nature of being human. Ultimately, the only way to really know if someone is flirting with you is to ask.
If you’re interested in doing more reading about queer flirting, check out these sources:
- Potapova, E. (2011). Usage, reading, and interpreting of nonverbal signs of erotic interest among Norwegian lesbians. Universitetet i Tromsø. https://munin.uit.no/handle/10037/4434
- Clark, J., Oswald, F., & Pedersen, C. L. (2021). Flirting with Gender: The Complexity of Gender in Flirting Behavior. Sexuality and Culture. Retrieved from https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A674297563/AONE?u=ecl_main&sid=googleScholar&xid=d146c9bd
- Pinsky, D. (2019). Doing gender online through flirtation. Open Edition Journal. Retrieved from https://journals.openedition.org/reset/1303
- Rose, S. M., & Zand, D. (2002). Lesbian dating and courtship from young adulthood to midlife. Journal of lesbian studies.. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1300/J155v06n01_09
