Herald Scotland Article: Lesbians Form Friendships & Relationships Through Networking!

Lesbian networking club marks evolution of capital’s gay culture

Member of the new Evolve club at its inaugural event on Friday night

Special Report: Vicky Allan

29 Aug 2010

Rhona Cameron is speaking, and it’s halfway between the comedian’s usual stand-up and a different, more improvised personal rambling, so there are laughs and there is a message: and that’s “diversify”.

The word is particularly relevant, here on Friday night, at the launch of a new lesbian networking club in Edinburgh called Evolve, which is all about reaching beyond the tired, old stereotypical lesbian scene and out to gay women of all types.

Cameron is a good person to endorse this. If there is a kind of mainstream lesbian style, neither quite butch nor feminine, it’s the one she sports with her halfway mullet haircut, tight jeans and high heels. She reflects a movement in lesbianism that isn’t about labels and stereotypes, but simply about being yourself.

At Edinburgh’s Revolution club, style ranges from crop-haired women in black to sensual, silky blouses. The women here look much like any random cross-section of the female population. Among them are teachers, vets, business women, IT experts. All that visibly seems to unite them is their womanhood.

Cameron is here, partly because it’s a professional booking, but also because she backs, she tells me, “as many things as possible that can encourage some sort of diversity not only in general within culture but also even within the community of lesbian culture”. She is guarded and matter-of-fact. Already we have had a tricky moment, because it turns out that she feels this is a private speaking event and she does not want me to quote anything she says when she performs. She is, however, willing to chat for a few minutes, and open up about how she feels about the event.

Everything’s a stepping stone. This is all a part of a wider community, and even the fact that it would be reported and considered part of acceptable mainstream culture is significant.

Rhona Cameron

Currently settled with her partner Suran Dickson (they appeared last year on Celebrity Wife Swap), Cameron has no need herself of a club like Evolve. “I’m at the age and time in my life where I don’t need to seek out a lesbian society. I live within a mixed society of many different communities of different types of people.” She understands, however, the needs of others to make contact and commune with like-minded people, and sees how Evolve is part of something bigger. “Everything’s a stepping stone. This is all a part of a wider community, and even the fact that it would be reported and considered part of acceptable mainstream culture is significant. It’s every single development like this that counts, from people doing very political stuff to gay people being represented in television.”

What was most interesting about Cameron’s performance, delivered from the middle of a busy floor, is that it partly told the story of how much Edinburgh for lesbians must have changed since she lived here in her early 20s. It described a time when the city was, for gay women, a one-pub town, when you had to join the peace movement to meet up with other lesbians. “Years ago in the 1980s,” she tells me, “when I was a young person growing up, there was only ever one bar and if you were a gay person and wanted to meet gay people, you went to one bar. It was the Laughing Duck, which we used to have to share with the gay men who have always dominated the culture more.”

The world Evolve is born into is very different. The club, whose advert promised a network for “gay professional ladies”, has attracted a wide age range: one that spans those who would have once hung out at the Laughing Duck and others just new to town and the scene. Strikingly, there is a new generation here, perhaps more influenced in style and approach by The L-Word – the US drama about lesbian life – than any local scene. Among them is Ania Diaz, a lipsticked, charismatic Polish 23-year-old, who says that what drew her to the club was that she “was always looking for the part of gay community that wouldn’t be gay from the first sight”.

For 25-year-old PT teacher Toni Purday, it was the desire simply to have more gay friends that drove her to attend. “I always have this stupid image in my head I’d love to have a little network of friends and call them up and say, hey do you fancy pizza and beer at my place tonight? Maybe it’s narrow-minded that they’ve all got to be gay, but because my life is so straight and everyone I meet is straight, I really crave some gayness.”

Purday is one of a trio that looks like it could have stepped straight out of the L-Word, young, glamorous and funny. The three look like they’ve been friends forever. Purday is here with her partner, Nicole, and has just made an instant new friend in Ania Diaz, who is, she says, laughing, already “slagging me worse than my girlfriend”. It’s not clear whether this is chemistry, like-mindedness or just the charm of the night, but before long Purday is attempting to be the go-between and suss out whether another woman might be interested in Diaz: cue lots of school disco-style whispering.

Evolve organiser Victoria Wilson wants this club to be one that embraces all, even women who have yet to come out. And certainly it is welcoming. Diaz asks how I felt about coming as a journalist. “Are you OK with the gay community or are you like, ‘Oh my God, they sent me off to interview the lesbian squad?… What if a girl hits on you, will you then be like ‘I’m married I’ve got children and a husband’?”

It seems strange that I would be any more worried about a girl hitting on me than a guy, but it does illustrate why gay women might need a space within which they feel safe and understood.

Evolve aims to do what the best of modern clubs and networking societies mostly do: allow people to be themselves and find others like themselves, rather than fit in with a model of a club member. Its tickets can be booked online and it is open to anyone who is interested. “I’ve spoken to a few women and they do seem to think that this is long overdue,” Cameron tells me. One of those, a 50-something teacher from Fife, says that this, for her, is “something completely different. This is civilised. I think everybody has been waiting for something like this”.