You can’t call yourself an ally if you post photos of you kissing your mates

Listen up straight girls: If you post pictures on social media of you kissing your girl mates, you cannot call yourself an ally to the LGBTQ+ community. Lesbians and women’s relationships are already fetishised – and if you post pictures on Instagram kissing your mates, you’re part of the problem and you literally have no excuse.

Right now there’s a TikTok trend where girls are showing a pic of them and their mate with the caption “us being best friends 99 per cent of the time”, and then a video of them kissing captioned “the other one per cent”. Last year too, there was the “best friends in a room” TikTok trend, where two girls who are “besties” film themselves kissing. Trends like these may seem innocent – if you’re both down for it, kissing your mate is fine, right? But it’s actually queerbaiting, and incredibly damaging.

I don’t even need to tell you that girls who like girls are constantly sexualised. “Lesbian” is the most searched-for porn category; every other message on dating apps seems to be just couples looking for a threesome; and straight men call us “hot” simply because we like who we like. I hate to break it to you men, but kind of the whole point of being a gay woman is that we don’t like you – our sexuality doesn’t exist just to turn you on.

For some people, trying out kissing other girls – including their mates – is an important step in them realising their sexuality – I’m not saying you can’t explore and do this, it’s obviously fine if you’re both down for it. But the issue is with straight people doing it performatively and looking for attention from doing it – such as choosing to post it on your Instagram story, or for a TikTok trend.

Exploring your sexuality is something that’s incredibly difficult and personal. I don’t know a single LGBTQ+ person who would have taken a picture of it and spread it around their social media accounts – let alone captioning it “two best friends kissing in a room” for a TikTok. Our sexuality isn’t a trend.

You’re not kissing your straight mate because you’re attracted to her and want to be with her in that way, and to pretend you are just completely disregards the genuine feelings that queer women have for other women. Not to mention, for a gay woman to post pictures kissing another girl on social media, that means she’s first had to go through the long, emotional and sometimes dangerous process of coming out to her friends and family.

The thing is, if you’re a straight girl taking pictures kissing another straight girl purely to put on Instagram or TikTok, you have absolutely no idea what it’s like to walk down the street holding a girl’s hand, scanning everyone you pass to check if you’re not safe and need to let go. When lesbians kiss in public, we get drinks thrown over us in clubs, asked to leave supermarkets, or assaulted on public transport. This is the reality we face.

Choosing to upload images of you kissing your mates just for validation isn’t a fun trend, it’s downright insulting to the queer people around the world who aren’t able to do this for fear of being assaulted or imprisoned for it.

We encounter harassment and homophobia every single day, and if you post pictures kissing your other straight girl mates, you’re knowingly choosing to ignore all this. And then how on earth can you say you’re an ally to the LGBTQ+ community? If you really supported us, you would take the time to listen and understand. So please, just stop.

Related stories recommended by this writer:

• Conversion therapy is finally being banned, three years after government promised to end it

• Uni’s a place for LGBTQ+ students to thrive, but this year many haven’t had the chance

• Non-binary students share mixed opinions on petition seeking to give their gender legal status