After my partner came out as nonbinary a couple years ago, I felt even more confused and guilty about my conflicting desires to both lean into my own womanhood and flee from it. I knew my partner’s identity was its own independent, beautiful thing, something that was entirely their own. But I still wondered — as people around me whom I loved began to move away from the genders they’d been assigned — what I should be doing, if anything, about mine. To know that I could finally come clean to my worrisome friends felt liberating beyond belief. I didn’t care about sacrificing my youth to move to outer London with a swarm of forty-somethings. All I wanted was to be with her full-time, and for it to be out in the open that we were together. At dinner, we wondered why we couldn’t have both: explicitly lesbian spaces that also explicitly love, and welcome, trans and gender-nonconforming people. Our identities shouldn’t be opposed, but in communion with each other: butch and femme, trans and cis, lesbian and queer. Another good resource is this list of the most (politically) liberal universities in the U.S. These schools will have more LGBTQ+ friendly policies than a conservative school will. I would write in my journal, the night before leaving: “There’s something so deliriously pleasurable in the idea of trusting myself enough to know exactly what I want.”

What I didn’t expect was everything else that would happen to me — and is still happening to me — thanks to this one little week in my otherwise pleasantly uneventful life. In the spirit of lesbian camp bonding, I told my new crew about my situation — nonmonogamous, not sure how to feel about it — which seemed to pique the interest of beer bathing suit girl, because she would soon afterward follow me into the impossibly tiny bathroom, bursting in on me mid-pee. The Q Center facilitates and enhances “a brave, affirming, liberatory, and celebratory environment for students, faculty, staff, and alumni of all sexual and gender orientations, identities, and expressions.” The Stone Center offers a number of LGBTQ programs and services on the 4th floor Billings Penthouse.When my partner jokingly warned me, before I left for the cruise, not to fall in love with a hot older butch — seriously, we joked about this — I thought, Fat chance. Not only because I had no intention of falling in love with anyone else, but because I thought hooking up with hot older butches would remain the stuff of my fantasies. The night before I left on the cruise, two of my best friends got married. Watching one of my friend’s dads talking at the wedding dinner about how much he loved his daughter and her new wife, I teared up a little and said something to my partner about it: “This is actually pretty nice, huh?” But they wrinkled their nose at me. They’re not a fan of weddings — the pomp and circumstance, the big, grand displays of public affection.

I planned to meet Dana in the ship lobby that morning so that we could wander around for a while before the event. When we set off into town together, she gently informed me that my whatever-it-was with Lynette had not gone unnoticed by the staff, who’d encouraged Dana to encourage me to spend more time speaking with other people and reporting on the ship’s endless entertainment options. In my relationship, I often worried that I was taking on the femme role to my partner’s masc — the Wendy to their Peter — in ways that weren’t always positive or healthy. My partner got frustrated when I mentioned what I thought were our gendered roles; they thought I was projecting straight bullshit into a queer space where it didn’t need to be. We were lesbian and nonbinary dykes; we were supposed to be beyond gender. We all formed one big circle, and the staffers got the ball rolling. First things first: How had we all heard about Olivia? Based on 13,500 responses, almost 10% of women ages 22 to 44 with a bachelor’s degree said they had had a same-sex experience, compared with 15% of those with no high school diploma. Women with a high school diploma or some college, but no degree, fell in between. Six percent of college educated women reported oral sex with a same-sex partner, compared with 13% who did not complete high school.If you're looking for a specific orientation, like lesbian or trans-accepting colleges, the good news is that an LGBTQ-friendly campus will likely provide the environment you're looking for. When we say a school is LGBTQ+ accepting, it means they'll be welcoming of people who identify as lesbian, trans, or any part of the queer community as well. Why Should You Consider an LGBTQ+ Friendly College? If You're an LGBTQ+ Student I would try to separate my feelings for Lynette from my feelings about wanting someone or something different in general — out of a desperate desire to feel some sort of control over my choices — and concede that was pretty much impossible. Bonding is built into an Olivia trip, which, I realized soon enough, is basically like grown-up lesbian camp. “It’s funny, because on a normal cruise, you’re trying to spend as much time as you can away from other people,” Jamie would later put it. “But we’re all here precisely because we want to be around everybody else.” Netflix’s The Prommight not be on par with the same kind of romance as the other films in this round-up, but it’s full of the sweetness of young love. Emma (Jo Ellen Pellman) just wants to take her girlfriend Alyssa (Ariana DeBose) to prom. But when the conservative PTA decide to cancel the dance all together, a troupe of Broadway stars descends on the town to make the dance happen, and give Emma and Alyssa the chance to let their love shine in front of everyone. An entire side of showers would be off-limits thanks to this person’s -ahem- bowel movement on the floor. An entire floor of girls had to share two showers that weekend. This person then moved their games right to the middle of the bathroom where you could be brushing your teeth staring at someone’s digested breakfast. It was disgusting and an experience that truly bonded the floor of girls for life. Honestly, though, I hope whoever was the culprit is doing well and has curbed their appetite for public pooping.