Fridae

A Beijing magazine recently launched an online women seeking women personals section. So far, though, it's been a big disappointment. The majority of ads are either posted by unsuspecting straight girls seeking female language exchange partners (sigh) or the dreaded straight couple out for some bi-curious fun.

Check out one of the latest cringe worthy ads.

"I'm a foreigner girl. I'd like to organise a private party for my boyfriend's birthday and give him a special gift - You (not Chinese) with me are the gift ;-)"

Give me stilted conversation with an earnest English student any day.

It's pretty obvious why many lesbians get bi-furious about the bi-curious - we have made our bed and we only want women in it - but why are we afraid of dating girls who play for both sides?

First off lesbians are a jealous breed. We have enough on our plate obsessing our girlfriend might be sneaking off behind our backs with another woman. If we've got to worry about her getting funky with a guy then we'd never get enough sleep.

At the back of our minds is that nagging conviction that one day she will leave us for a man - especially when the pressure is on to marry and have a conventional family.

There's a scene in the 1994 lesbian flick, Go Fish where a jury of gay women get stuck into one of the butch characters, Daria, after she sleeps with a guy. "It was just sex," she pleads.

But for us, "it's not just sex." Sleeping with a bisexual puts you one step away from sleeping with a man. Like tucking into a vegetarian mapo dofu that has had its pork bits scooped out by the kitchen staff.

You would think that as a group that has been marginalised since time immemorial, lesbians could be more open-minded. We label ourselves GBLT - gays, bisexuals, lesbians and transgendered - in a bid to embrace all sexual minorities, but many dykes still find sexually fluid women are not their cup of tea.

Of course some lesbians have no problem with bisexual girls. A number of local butch lesbians in Beijing treasure feminine qualities so much that even lipstick lesbians are not girly enough for them. I met one Beijing dyke who goes even further and exclusively hunts out straight girls. She became a make-up artist so she could spend all day surrounded by hot hetero chicks.

I had a near brush with the bisexual boogie man myself last week. An evildoer texted me posing as the boyfriend of my partner. Although we have an open relationship, the idea that she is "sleeping with the enemy" made my stomach curdle.

After vehemently denying the boyfriend in colourful putonghua, she put her mother on the phone. In a glorious reversal of the expected parental attitude to homo offspring, this is what Ma said:

"Dinah, I swear to you, my daughter is 100 percent lesbian. She has never slept with boys. I won't let her sleep with boys. Oh! And by the way Happy Birthday. Why don't you come over on Sunday and I'll make you birthday lunch!"

Let's hope she makes it vegetarian. From scratch.