Else & Ilse | LGBTIQ+ adventurers

Ever since we’ve met, we’ve spent a continually increasing amount of time with each other. At the beginning of this year, we finally decided to move in together! Then: COVID-19, lockdown. And ever since, we haven’t spent a single night apart from each other, but didn’t officially move in together.  Finding a place was surprisingly easy, despite the pandemic, despite living in a city with a difficult housing market. But we got super lucky: the house where Else lived the past two years has an empty apartment, which is currently overhauled. It’s going to be available in September. Three rooms, a big balcony, perfect location.  Else had terminated her lease to end in June, but COVID-19 has taught us that we can share Ilse’s smallish apartment. So we didn’t mind to wait a little longer for an almost perfect apartment. And now, we finally got our official rental agreement! We can’t wait to move in together (although we practically already did). We are mentally painting the walls, we...

We recently talked about coming out in general and that it is a never-ending process. There are always small(er) coming outs every time we meet new people or even when walking down the street holding hands. Kissing in public in a bar. Introducing ourselves as girlfriends at events: all of these are small coming outs. It is a process — for some people it's easy, for others it's more difficult. Some people might even have to fear severe consequences. We, in contrast, are lucky enough to not having to live in fear. But still: there are coming outs for us that aren't particularly easy. One of these not so easy moments is coming out at work. We know from quite a lot of lesbians that they feared the moment when people at their workplace found out about them being gay. You might have a good and much respected position. You're known for making a good job and people respect you. Telling them you're gay should not make a difference in your job position or the respect you'...

Three weeks ago, we talked about virtual harassment and objectification where we also cited the sentence used as a title for this post. We are aware that this sentence was supposed to be an insult and that many same-sex couples would feel hurt. But: we don't. Both of us don't want kids. There was a time Ilse thought she would have children one day, but Else never really planned on it. So telling us that we can't have a child doesn't do anything to us. At least not directly. But it still maddens us. This intentionally hurtful comment is based upon the heteronormative supposition that every woman eventually wants to have at least one child. Most of us have been told that ‘we just don’t know it yet,’ that ‘we haven’t met the right person (man) yet,’ that ‘we will see that we really do want children eventually,’ and that ‘we will surely regret our decision one day.’ No. No. No. No. We are indeed capable of making this decision. We are able to know what we want. It’s not abo...