Verity Johnson: A confession - it's not cool to kiss girls if you're straight

I was effectively using homosexuality as an accessory to enhance my allure. Photo / Thinkstock

Hooking up with women to arouse men hardly advancing gay rights

There are many things I am ashamed of.

I'm ashamed I listen only to 80s pop ballads. I'm ashamed of flirting outrageously with teachers at school. I'm ashamed of my inability to find any dog nice. (Please don't take that as an invitation to try to sway me. I hate dogs. I will not like yours. Don't introduce us. I'll just say something offensive and I'll have to spend the next five years pretending that I didn't mean it.)

But most recently, I've become paralytic with shame over being a barsexual. What is a barsexual? Well, it's a dinky name, used by the dinkily named Generation Facebook, for straight women who hook up with other women in bars.

Barsexual, geddit?

What will happen is that you'll be going out with the girls, you'll have your eye on some unsuspecting sucker, you'll have a few sangrias and then become convinced that the best way to impress him is to start kissing one of your girlfriends.

It's a habit particularly common in teenage years. You're supposed to grow out of it, alongside Smirnoff Ice and bathroom selfies. Only there's an impressive amount of young, liberal, leftie 20 somethings who still top off the night with a female flutter.

I was one of them until about a year ago when I convinced myself I'd kicked it. Then the other day I found myself at a party, boasting about how many women I'd hooked up with. I wasn't actively grabbing and smooching anything in a bikini. But I was still using hooking up with women as a way of enhancing my image with guys.

Now I'm young, I'm female, and I'm convinced I'm cooler than a giraffe in a beret. And this made me disgusted by myself.

What in the name of Christ did I, and every other girl who has given birth to this label, think I was doing? I am straight. I know this because I've only ever wanted to sleep with men. Now, I can find women beautiful, I don't mind kissing or touching them, but deep down I know I'm straight. So, when I hooked up with women in bars, it wasn't because I was struggling to come to terms with bi or homosexuality. I was doing it to look edgy. Hip. Out there, babe.

I was effectively using homosexuality as an accessory to enhance my allure. I'm amazed someone who was actually gay didn't come over and punch me in the face. I, and every girl who does this, am turning homosexuality into a commodity. And if I was gay, I'd be livid.

If I was gay, I imagine I'd be furious that after all the time, effort and anger that went into achieving equality, white middle-class girls come along and decide that gay is the new Gucci. It's not as though you're encouraging same-sex relationships. Yes, you might be able to argue that it shows that being gay has become cool.

But barsexuality isn't just about looking cool. It's about looking cool through arousing men. And so what it's supporting is women publicly performing for men's pleasure. So is it really a triumph for gay rights?

And we white, atheist, leftie single girls are a traditional stronghold of support for gay rights. Does our barsexuality actually sabotage our commitment to gay rights? I don't think barsexual girls want to sabotage it; I know I certainly don't. But I don't think we're making the connection between barsexuality and being offensive. And it needs to be made if we actually support this.

The other thing that concerns me about barsexuality, is where the idea came from? How did we decide that hooking up with women was a great way of attracting men? And how did it get so mainstream that we think its part of a standard night out?

From a watertight survey of my office, I gather this didn't happen 30 years ago.

And whenever there's a new and questionable sexual practice, the first thing I ask myself is, "Is this because of porn?"

I'm probably never going to know. I'll add it to the list beneath cricket rules and parallel parking.

But what I do know is that Germaine Greer wouldn't be impressed if I told her feminists like me are proudly and publicly acting out male fantasies.

"Wow," she'd say with an eye roll, "the bra burning was worth it then."