Fridae

This year, the lesbians got invited to Nation.

And out of roughly 1,500 tickets sold, how many do you think went to the girls? Maybe 50. Maybe a bit less.

So, where were all the dykes? Apparently at home with a ball of wool and playing with their pussy.

"When you lesbians get hitched that's it," says Marck, a 38-year-old Brit guy at Nation. "You shack up together on the second date, get a couple of cats, stay at home and knit and never go out again."

While Marck's assessment is a tad harsh - I've never been able to knit - those ticket numbers are telling. Why don't lesbians party like it's 1999? Why don't they like to get as deliciously slutty as gay men?

Part of the reason is simple economics. Women don't earn as much as men. It's not so easy for dykes, however butch, to go flitting off abroad in search of circuit party decadence. Buying cat food, in the end, may take precedence over those dollars in the jar reserved for Friday night boozing. Take me for example. On what Fridae pays me, I'm lucky these days if I can afford to get into a free event.

Maybe it's simply that we're not hot enough, suggests Jockie, a Canadian-Chinese dyke living in Beijing.

"We don't look as good with our shirts off after a line of coke," she says.

Now I'm as much a fan of the sculpted pec as anyone, but there is plenty to be said for having an equivalent culture of cute dykes disrobing in clubs.

According to The Stud, it's all to do with infrastructure.

"In the west, when gays were closeted, the way they went out to meet other gays was to go to clubs," she says. "At the same time that gay men were getting into circuit parties, gay women were going topless at drumming circles and going to feminist pot lucks. That's because the social institution surrounding lesbianism came of age at the same time as the second wave of feminism."

And Asia, she says, has taken its cues from the west.

"In Asia," she says, "you don't have the culture of women behaving badly enough to support a bar culture."

In Beijing, the main gay club is called Destination. It has a big, bouncy dance floor; MTV; a bar with special "homo" cocktails; an intimate lounge; cute flirtatious bartenders; a caf�; and visiting DJs. The club is packed with a palette of men - all ages and degrees of cuteness - until 3, 4 am on the weekends.

The capital's most popular dyke bar happens on Saturdays only. Pipe doesn't have DJs, instead Shania Twain plays on a loop; you'll be lucky if the bar staff know how to mix a gin and tonic; the bar girls are sulky and very definitely straight; and the door in the toilets fell off three months ago and hasn't yet been replaced. Most of the clientele - spiky-haired tomboy teenagers and their femme girlfriends - have gone home by midnight.

"There just aren't as many places for women," says Clarice, a thirty-something dyke living in the US. "There are only a few bars for women even in San Francisco compared to hundreds or so for men."

So which came first? The bad bars, or the stay-at-home dykes? Are we such party poopers because lesbian clubs are lame, or did dyke bars never have a chance because girls just don't wanna have fun?

Fingers, a 33-year-old Singaporean dyke, says she thinks it's all down to biology. Girls aren't as pleasure seeking as men.

"I think this lifestyle (difference) has to do with the different levels of sex hormones in men and women," she says. "Gay men, after all, are still men. They are merely acting from biological drives and needs. Women operate from a whole different range of hormonal urges."

A sentiment shared by Fridae's founder and chief executive officer, Stuart Koe.

"(Nation) is driven by men meeting men; not just for sex, but it is driven by that," says Koe. "Women socialize via dinner parties with close-knit friends. They're more laid back, there's more depth to their friendships.

"Men are just a bit more hedonistic."

The Stud disagrees.

"People maintain that men like to have sex more than women," she says. "But I don't think that's true and I don't think that explains everything."

I'm with the Stud on this. We all like to have sex. Don't we?

"Simply, young gay men think with their pricks," says Clarice. "I don't think lesbians are fundamentally less sexual... just less prone to alcoholic exploitation and exhibition.

"I think lesbians, like many straight woman, are insecure about their sexuality and not so confident about expressing it publicly... having said that, I have seen some pretty raucous lesbians go at it in clubs."

Claire, an American dyke living in Beijing, blames it on "the ease of the penis".

Gays prefer clubbing because "it's easy for them to go out and get blowjobs in a club bathroom. Girls just can't do that. Or do that as easily," she says.

I want to disagree, but then I think about that toilet in Pipe with the door off its hinges.

If we're not hot for exhibitionist and casual sex, what are we into?

According to Clarice, we want someone to look after us.

"I think lesbians just want different things from a relationship than guys," she says. "Even if they pretend to long for someone hot, what they really want is someone who won't abandon them... and that's hard to find that at a disco."

And once we find that, we're out of the loop.

"Once we get in a relationship," adds Claire, "we're just content to sit at home and watch movies. We get into this pattern."

Maybe Marck's right. I ask Fingers if she'd like things to be different.

"It is not up to me to wish for anything 'unnatural'," she says. "Let sleeping dogs lie."

I thought it was cats?