The woman’s exasperation was all too apparent. ‘I envy lesbians,’ she posted. ‘They avoid all the crap we have to put up with.’
The replies came thick and fast, many in firm agreement. ‘I’m seriously considering joining their club,’ wrote another. These women are members of a Facebook group dedicated to exposing male ‘creeps’ and ‘villains’ – old-fashioned cads and bounders, if you’d rather.
Members post photographs, reviews and warnings about men who lie, cheat or are abusive – so other women won’t fall for them.
At peak, there were 100,000 women in this group sharing their stories.
As a lesbian in a happy, long-term relationship, I joined the group to research the current state of play in heterosexual dating for my latest book, Lesbians: Where Are We Now?
Real life has only confirmed what I found online: heterosexual female friends of mine in search of a decent man feel similarly fed up.
Their experience on dating apps is so dire that one told me recently it’s simply a relief not to be sent explicit pictures before a first date.
So I was unsurprised to discover that increasing numbers of straight women are more open than ever to making the leap to lesbianism.
Julie Bindel joined a Facebook group where women expose ‘creeps’ and ‘villains’
According to ONS data, the proportion of young women in the UK who say they are attracted to the same sex rose above 10 per cent for the first time in 2022. Statistics specifically on women swearing off men later in life are hard to come by – but anecdotally, they are everywhere.
Take the woman I met, who attended a week-long Open University summer school on the history of feminism. Away from the kids, the cooking and the infuriating reality of endlessly picking up her husband’s socks from the floor, she could relax and think about herself for possibly the first time in years.
She met a woman in the pub on the final evening – and they ended up in a relationship that lasted far longer than her previous heterosexual marriage.
Another, Sali, in her early 40s, approached me at a lesbian event in January this year, telling me it was the first time she had been among such a crowd.
‘I haven’t had a relationship with a woman yet,’ she told me, shyly, ‘but I have been attracted to several over the years, while becoming less interested in men. I have now decided I am a lesbian, and hope to meet the right woman soon.’
The tipping point? A particularly unpleasant date with a man ‘who spent the evening either looking at his phone, or watching football on the TV in the corner of the bar’. She realised she had no enthusiasm left for dating men. ‘They bore me,’ she said.
I’m quite certain the number of midlife women ‘switching sides’ like this is growing. When I’ve asked women who have come out in later life – often leaving a history of full-blooded heterosexual relationships behind them – why they did it, their answers are revealing.
Yes, there’s the luck of meeting the right woman at the right time – but these women are also totally sick of and uninspired by both the men in their lives, and heterosexual relationships in general.
There is evidence that for some women, sexuality is on a spectrum
And, to be frank, looking at the middle-aged men around today, I don’t blame them. Many become miserable when their careers falter in midlife, and they have less luck with women. They simply cannot understand why the world no longer revolves around them.
A recent study found that men who get divorced die sooner, because they rely on their wives for everything, from cooking meals to being reminded to take medicine.
How is a woman meant to feel desire for a partner she has to parent too? Many of these ‘man babies’ also rest on their laurels when it comes to their looks.
Possibly boosted by the old stereotype that they age ‘better’ than women and become so-called ‘silver foxes’, many midlife men simply shun exercise after a certain age and think a splash of water is good enough for a skincare regime.
By comparison, women take far better care of themselves for the simple reason that we are judged more harshly.
Women are more likely to eat healthily, lose excess weight, and use good quality anti-ageing skin products in a bid to stay looking and feeling their best.
Indeed, many midlife women don’t just thrive but truly come into their own at this stage of their lives in terms of work, friendships and confidence, perhaps because they feel less under scrutiny than they did when they were younger.
So no wonder increasing numbers are finding their own sex more desirable.
Sociologist Jane Ward argues that many women are ‘straight by cultural default and not out of true desire’
In an increasingly macho, aggressive world, it’s not just men and women’s social and political views that are diverging, though. Across the generations, the emotional and intimate gulf between the sexes has also widened. The constant availability of hardcore, misogynistic pornography has shaped many men’s attitudes and sexual desires.
Boys and men are being indoctrinated to believe that choking women during sex until they pass out, or subjecting them to other painful practices, is what passes for an erotic experience these days.
At the University of California, a new ‘straight studies’ course asks why women date straight men at all, since the experience is statistically so negative.
Its professor, the sociologist Jane Ward, argues that many women are ‘straight by cultural default and not out of true desire’. Perhaps this goes some way to answering the question of how women could just switch sides, apparently on a whim?
There is evidence that for some women, sexuality is on a spectrum. Many people feel some attraction to both sexes, and those desires can ebb and flow over the course of a lifetime, affected by many factors.
And the reality is that most women still do not have full sexual freedom – I’ve heard enough insults of ‘lezzer’ thrown at me over the years to know that some people consider my sexuality fair game for critique or outright attack.
Therefore, for many women, choosing to reject a relationship with a man in favour of shacking up with another woman has not always felt like an option.
Those who felt attracted to both men and women might well choose to ignore half their feelings in favour of a ‘safer’, heterosexual union.
Had I not met out-and-proud lesbians when, at the age of 17, I moved to Leeds from Darlington in the north east of England, I might well have stayed in the closet and married the boy from my council estate.
Then, increasingly entrenched in my heterosexual identity, I might have stayed that way for the rest of my life.
But as sexual freedoms continue to increase, could many more women now admit to – and even act upon – feelings of sexual attraction to other women? Of course they could.
I know many women who had crushes on girls at school, or a flicker of sexual attraction to a friend on a drunken night out, but just thought that was normal. All my straight female friends have, at some stage, had either a fleeting sexual attraction for, or a major crush on, another woman.
Then perhaps, one day, they find themselves fed up to the back teeth of their boyfriend, or lazy husband, and decide to be brave and branch out.
So why shouldn’t women get sold on Sapphism in middle age?
I don’t know any woman who has come out in later life and regretted it, or ended up back in the heterosexual closet.
I remember a great cartoon from the 1980s, depicting a woman declaring, ‘My mother made me a lesbian’, and her friend responding, ‘If I gave her the wool, would she make me one too?’
I firmly believe there are still many more latent lesbians than those who are out and proud.
In an ideal world, any woman should be able to come out at whatever age and feel happy with her choice.
And given the state of modern men, we shouldn’t be in the least surprised as more of them choose to do so.
Have you come out in midlife? Tell us your story at femailreaders@dailymail.co.uk
Lesbians: Where Are We Now? by Julie Bindel (£20, Forum Books) is out now.
