Life in Taiwan, is not a walk in the park, but it is getting better.
No matter where you are, even if you are in the most LGBTIQ accepted country, you can still see people hiding from who they are. Taiwan is a country that consists of some people with new thoughts and some people with traditional minds. Most of the young ones don’t care if you are a lesbian, you’re just a friend of theirs. But when it comes to the elders, they think it’s a wrong thing to do. Some of them even take their kids to see a doctor and try to “make them straight”. However, if you are in an all girls school, you can see lesbian couples everywhere in the campus. I was in an all girls high school, and I met two of my exes there. But once you are out of there, it’s kind of hard to find one. When we have a crush on a girl, we just assume that she’s a lesbian or bisexual. And once we know she’s not, we usually move on. Not everyone knows the rule “don’t fall in love with a straight girl” though. We have gay bars, of course. It’s one way to meet girls. But I guess lots of us don’t go places like that, we just try, see if this girl’s into us, and see how it goes.
Taiwan is more open about the LGBTIQ community now. We have gay pride, gay bars, and you can see lesbian couples at a lot of places you go. I am not the kind of person who cares a lot about how people look at me, but I can still feel it when some people stare. Young people don’t stare at lesbian couples, they don’t care because it’s normal to see that in this generation. They treat us like we are no different to straight couples, they are even curious about lesbian things. For example, my friends like to ask me about how we have sex or who’s more dominant (which is an annoying question). I’m actually happy about this because it’s really nice that you can be who you are and show your love to your girlfriend in front of these people. Although sometimes I feel like I’m like a lesbian dictionary! In the meantime, there are still people that think it’s strange for two girls to be holding hands or cuddling. They’d stare at you until you’re out of their sights, you can even see the questions on their faces. They knit their brows. They’re often elders, like my mom, or grandmother. I’m not saying that all of the elders are traditional, there are some exceptions. One of my friend’s grandmother asked several times about her girlfriend; “Is she cute? How long have you been together?” Something like that. Anyways, we receive both staring and smiles. But it doesn’t matter, we just have to get used to it. And we usually don’t care. Because we’re with someone who we feel love for, in my opinion, that’s all that matters.