Something all baby gays experience after coming out is going from being a closeted queer person with a bunch of straight friends to an out queer person with little or no queer friends. Shows like The L word, Feminin/Feminin and Lip Service make it appear as though all hot dykes have a large, close knit group of gorgeous lesbian friends, which makes us all feel like we should too.
This is an unfortunate depiction to feed young, out women, since that’s basically the opposite of our lives. Having a full-time job and going out after work with your coworkers isn’t the magic recipe for cultivating a queer group of babes, unless you happen to work at a lesbian focused company and your girlfriend is a club photographer. But if that’s not your reality, there’s no harm in thinking out of the box, and exploring how to get more exposure to queer women, so you can find an L Word group of your own.
Join a class that has some sort of queer focus.
A great resource is meetup.com, an online hub for neighborhood meetups, which allows you to filter by location, and anything you’re interested in. Searches like LGBT, queer and lesbian are good jumping off points, and if you’re underwhelmed with the groups offered in your area, you can always start your own (and then promote it on the HER feed, so more people know about it)!
Get friendly at bars.
Although bars can be both the best and worst place to find sexual partners/girlfriends, they can also be a great place to find friends; you just need to know who to look for. If your gaydar gets triggered, make sure to stay away from any queer women who seem suuuper drunk, combative or immature, and approach queer women who seem more reserved, in a smaller group of people, and someone drinking slowly. A few places where you can start conversations: in the bathroom line, buying drinks, outside with the smokers, around the pool table (or whatever game thing they have at the bar).
Volunteer at your local LGBT Community Center.
Volunteering is always worth your time, as it feeds your soul while giving back to a community, but it’s also a great place to network and meet people. Working at any LGBT based non-profit center or program will allow you to be in contact with other queer women in your area who are also interested in some of the same things as you are.
Go to lesbian events around town.
Most cities in the US don’t have lesbian bars. I live in San Francisco and even here, we have 0 dedicated dyke bars (RIP The Lexington), but everywhere has girl parties. Make it a point to go out to the lesbian parties (when clubs host lesbian nights) around town and any and all daytime events that involve queer women; everything from bookstore readings to roller derby. Exploring new things while also exposing yourself to more queer women will pay off.
Get online.
It may sound insane, but dating apps are a good place to find friends too. Although all these women are online to find women to date/fuck/whatever, it’s highly unlikely that these women are going to be annoyed by you hitting them up to hang out. A good way to enter into that is looking for several women who look like your type of friend and send a message with something as simple as, “Hi. I saw your profile on here and you seemed cool, and I think we could be friends. Would you be interested in coming to a queer meetup?” If they say yes, let them know a place and time, and sometime in your near future, you’ll have a bunch of queer women that choose to meet up with you and get to know each other!
BUT nothing will happen unless you get their numbers and text them to hang!
This is integral. Unless you reach out and make that move, there’s no way to control your queer friend group destiny. You have to make it happen, so start making new friends, one text at a time!
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