It's not just for the boys, you know...
	Five years ago, the net only existed for me as a science fiction vision which was very slowly coming together as Groupware and CSCW.... I'd read the books about groupware, even worked as an editorial researcher on one of them, but I was still attached to the view of a computer mainly as a means of producing print for communication and maintaining elaborate databases, rather than combining the two focuses into a single communicating tool.
Returning to university as a mature student in a women's college changed all that. I was given an email account, and there were a couple of aged terminals dedicated to quiet Telnet-ing or Gophering in the computer room, with a notice on the wall indicating that preference would be given on these computers to those working , rather than emailing. This didn't immediately convince me that we had leapt into a new Communication Age! However, as soon as Netscape became available on the Macintoshes, there was a noticeable increase in the amount of people who could be found 'researching' via the Web. Since then, creativity can often be seen, particularly at 3am, when the dedicated Mac users can be found changing their backgrounds, stealing the odd .gif or three, or cursing the [male] computer officers for their failure to fix the rodents on the machines where they have our own personal favourite sites bookmarked!
	My own personal road to Damascus came in two parts. First, there was The Joy of Email. Friends who graduated before me were going to jobs where having an email account was as normal and everyday as it was at university. My girlfriend moved to Edinburgh, and "email to be used for academic purposes only" took on a whole new meaning! The second revelation came with the ability to search for Websites with gay and lesbian resources under the guise of 'research'. This only hit me a year later when I was frantically searching for a viable dissertation topic.
I would have been quite happy to have spent a year on sheer content analysis of every bisexual/lesbian resource on the whole of the Web, had there not been a need to narrow down the topic to 10,000 words. Searching for media images of lesbians supposedly gave a greater focus to what I was doing, but I'm sure many other women have tales of how they decided to "Just look at x" and five hours later their rumbling stomach reminded them that woman cannot live by digital input alone... Small gems from this research were the articles I found: try Cathy Grigger's "Lesbian Bodies In The Age Of (Post)Mechanical Reproduction" Or for soothing female images, sexuality unknown, Pre-Raphaelites
	Way back in 1977, I wrote in Gay News about how lucky those who defined ourselves as gay were compared to heterosexuals. When we moved through our jobs, we immediately consulted the centre pages of Gay News to see where the local gay groups and venues were. Community existed in the provinces through the small GLF or CHE groups, supplementing Heaven and Gateways in the capital. Now, with the development of the Internet, there is a similar sense of digital community growing within those who accessed the gay & lesbian pages, and found their way to the lists such as UK-motss and UK-poofs. Despite occasional flame wars, a growing global digital gay community is being established. Lesbian participation may be smaller numerically, but it is rapidly catching up with the gay males. There is, if anything, a greater diversity in the membership of the women's groups, because they are less likely to fragment into specific interest areas.
This is not to say that community itself is restricted to sifting through dozens of emails each day from people whose faces you'll never know. Any Netsearch under "lesbian" will, once you have got past such horrors as 'Hot Sleazy Pictures'[no, I'm not including a link to this site], eventually bring you to the homepages of lesbians who have dedicated themselves to the task of linking with all the useful resources out there. Probably the best place to start for anyone new to this journey is Dykes' World : the page itself opens up into an exploration of the best sites for lesbian and bisexual women. Although this site is professional enough to frighten those still struggling to change the background colour of their home page, the sense of identity which looking at other women's web pages gives is important. This has been fostered by several companies who are offering free web pages, which is giving us all the opportunity to be creative not only with our identity, but with the image we project to the world.
	Why should this be important to us as women? Probably because the first search for "lesbian" on the net will still turn up pornography aimed at heterosexual males. When you're isolated geographically from any other lesbian and bisexual women, this sight of what the web holds in the way of lesbian images doesn't necessarily automatically lead to a positive self-image. Reassure yourself... they are merely extensions of the Page 3 mentality which is unfortunately alive and well, and transferring its virtual tabloid self merrily onto the Web.
The Visible Lesbian , Alison Hennegan's Gay New's literary pages were once the only public face of lesbianism in the UK... we've gone through Arena Three, Sappho, and occasionally appeared in Spare Rib... all have passed away. We revel in glorious colour in Diva... but these media have always been flat, with the sense that they are laid on us rather than creating them ourselves always predominating. For me, the importance of the Web is the opportunity to create our own form of visibility. For now this might be the free pages given on sites such as Geocities, or the chance for other lesbians to write for online magazines. But it's also participating openly as lesbians in the meeting places on the Web where women who are not necessarily all or even predominantly lesbian/bisexual gather, but who have a stated policy for acceptance of all sexualities and an intolerance for bigotry, such as the Star Trek Women's Terrorist Task Force.
	Lesbian and bisexual women have an important part to play in encouraging this ethical stance throughout the web, giving more opportunities for facilitating diversity in secure, non-hostile environments...as well as at a local level, campaigning for more access to the Web for other women who are at present excluded. This is an important issue for all women, and crosses all the boundaries of sexualities. Whether you're out or not, you could be campaigning for public libraries to allow free internet access, or supporting projects such as Anne Campbell MP's Cambridge On Line City. The only way we can be certain that it's not just for the boys is to stop lurking on the edges, and get out there and participate!
	© 1996 Franni Vincent Originally commissioned by Andi Hinkinson,a former editor of QVision, an online gay magazine (now deceased)...