A ‘girl-girl’ affaire

QCan you give me your medical advice about a ‘girl-girl’ affaire that I have somehow got myself into, Doc?

I am 17, and a student. I am still (just about) a virgin, even though I have dated several boys during the last year. I enjoyed kissing them, although their attempts at ‘fooling around’ sexually with me have been pretty clumsy. To be frank, none of them has brought me to orgasm.

Doc, I should tell you that I do occasionally masturbate whenever I am feeling really sexy. I have no difficulty in reaching a climax on my own.

Well, during the Christmas season I met an older girl who was, in fact, just leaving my college. We were both at a party and it happened that we had to have a sleepover at the same place. I was feeling a little unhappy because a boy had ‘ditched’ me. She ended up cuddling and comforting me.

I don’t know how it happened, but during the night, her hands began to ‘stray’. The result was that I unexpectedly climaxed. I was really embarrassed by this, Doc, but she just laughed a lot and told me that it would be good for me.

Since then, I have seen her two to three times on what I suppose you could call ‘dates’. On each occasion, we have cuddled and kissed and occasionally gone a little further. But now, she is going to England to live with her family for a year, and I don’t really know where my life is going, Doctor. Am I a lesbian? Do you think that she is a lesbian? Is lesbianism actually illegal in Jamaica? And what is the situation in England if I travelled there to join her? What would you advise me to do now?

A I think I should begin by telling you that in a very large sex survey published in the US last year, 17.4 per cent of women said that they had had sexual contact with other females. However, only 1.3 per cent of women classed themselves as lesbian. This does seem to confirm what many previous sex surveys have suggested – that many young females do play around with what is often called ‘lipstick lesbianism’ for a short while in their teens or early 20s, but they adopt a ‘straight’ lifestyle later on. Some research carried out many years ago suggested convincingly that girls were more likely to fool around with other females when they were: I away from home. I in some distress.

And when this happened to you at Christmas, you were certainly away from home and distressed over being dumped by a boy. Summing up, I don’t really think that you are a lesbian – though there may be some bisexual elements in your character at the present moment. Is the other young lady a lesbian? I have no idea. But she has gone off to England, so she is ‘out of the picture’ for at least a year. I don’t think you should follow her there. I feel you should stay in Jamaica, explore your own sexuality, and see how it goes. To answer your legal questions: In Jamaica, lesbianism has never been illegal. This is sometimes claimed to be due to the fact that back in the 19th century, when England was laying down laws concerning homosexuality, no one dared tell Queen Victoria that women sometimes had sex with each other! In the UK, too, lesbianism has never been illegal. In the US, it has been legal everywhere since a Supreme Court decision in 2003. Whether that might change in the future is anybody’s guess!