After enough years, thinking up new dyke opinion pieces to write becomes a little more challenging.  Address the stereotypes, lament the hatred, joke about dyke drama ... blah blah blah.  One of my three readers said (and I quote), "Oi feminist, write about hair - I want to throw the razor away."  My personal opinion of leg, armpit and pube shaving and waxing and electrolysis and so on is, if you want to do it, do; if not, don't.

Most queer women I talk to these days say they're fans of shavin...

"I hate the term commitment rings," she said - and I pondered it a bit.  If it isn't an engagement ring, or a wedding ring, but it is a symbol of love and commitment, what else is one supposed to call it?

Then of course, there is our communal queer history of concepts like engagement and marriage representing things we were not allowed to do by law.  And so what we could do, was commit verbally, in front of our friends, any family who hadn't disowned us and our cats.  We could get Wiccan and c...

Don't ask me why, but "lesbian haircuts" and "lesbian hairstyles" are the two search terms that still get me the most hits on Stuff Dykes Like and I think I only ever posted one link to a book on the subject there.  So I figured I'd better write something about it all.

Once upon a long ago, on a queer internet forum, us lesbians used to refer to the Twelve Sacred Lesbian Haircuts - they don't exist, any more than the Secret Lesbian Handshake does, but it's a hell of a good way to tease newbies...

I took that photo in East London the other day, sniggering.  I wondered which headline would scare South African lesbians most; swine flu or being haunted by girlfriends?  On the whole, I think I'd rather have the swine flu, thank you.  That said, most of my excess of exes seem to be delightfully benign these days and I am certainly not stalking any old flames myself, so perhaps I am immune, for now at least. 

Why is it that great friendships are so very simple and comfortable, but girlfriend...

I get called sir by cabin crew and petrol pump attendants and business contacts and, well just lots of people.  It happens to me face to face and on the phone too.  As a young kid I was mistaken for a boy a few times and was highly delighted - my Famous Five hero was always George.  I'm sure I've said it before, but there was one memorable time when I was 23 and a guy shook my hand and congratulated me on being brave enough and man enough to wear a skirt.  I've never been particularly uncomfo...

Partner.  Is it just me, or did that word once signify a subtle way of not specifying the gender of one's lover?  And didn't more queer than straight people use it, or have I been fooling myself?  In my often muddled mind, when I lived in the United Kingdom in the nineties, "partner" was a useful signal that you were in fact talking to a queer person, because straight people just said girlfriend or boyfriend without fear of being discriminated against for it and of course, in those days, only...

I referred to someone idly as a dyke the other day and she said, "I'm no dyke!" although her Facebook profile intimated that she was into women.  I looked at a photo, saw long hair and light dawned.  "Oh HO!" quoth I to myself, "She is one of many lesbians who think that dyke equates to butch."  So I returned to the relevant chat window and said, "Dyke doesn't equal butch these days, we've reclaimed it from being a derogatory term applied by homophobes and have made it into a good, strong wor...

I love photographing drag kings and queens - my only complaint is that there aren't nearly enough drag kings in South Africa.  If I had the (ho ho) bollocks to perform, I'd start doing it myself.  Anyway, while photographing a gay beauty pageant and cabaret in East London the other night, I thought about the last time I photographed lots of drag queens - which was Johannesburg Pride 2008.  It gave me a lot of great photographs and some new Facebook friends ... there was one particularly nasty...