When I boarded the cruise at the end of April, my partner of nearly five years and I had been experimenting with nonmonogamy. Plus, I’ve never really believed postfeminist arguments about how lipstick and high heels can be Empowering™ — cynical messaging that has primarily benefited the men who want to fuck us and sell us things. It was one of our talents that week: saying absolutely everything that was on our minds, and processing until we felt we couldn’t possibly process anymore — at least, of course, until the next night. Various right-wing and centrist political groups, as well as mainstream religious organizations, sought to counter this aspect of Weimar culture by promoting their own version of German culture. According to everyone’s awkward intros, they were from all over the country: Denver, San Diego, Seattle, Nashville, Houston, New York.

Stripped fully naked, the pair share their walk-in shower together and mum Mary even helps wash her daughter, lathering her up and getting her ready for the day. m., she'd lost the ability to speak coherently—her thoughts started to fade along with her control over her body. But I’d let myself believe the stereotype that lesbians chose to retire their wilder days in favor of U-Hauling, cat-rearing, and succumbing to lesbian bed death, rather than acknowledge the reality, which is that if lesbians aren’t partying hard, it’s at least in part because so many of our physical spaces are disappearing.When I first pitched this story to my editors, I thought I’d be reporting on a lesbian cultural artifact in its twilight years. Fuck ’em,” the girl said, grabbing for me again, but I wrestled my way out, burning with embarrassment at the prospect of facing a bunch of people who’d know exactly what we’d been doing. I would sleep in Alia’s bed that night and accidentally pat her butt in my sleep, my mind clearly deluding my body into believing I was still on the cruise with Lynette.

Since this scenario is rarely portrayed in the media or in educational programming, "it can be especially challenging to identify their experience as violence," she says. In 2009, the government signed into law a new criminal code penalising same-sex relations between consenting adults. Before Elvira performed we were welcomed by Tisha, Olivia’s VP and our cruise director, who greeted the “ladies of Olivia” and announced a few of the events coming up over the next few days, including a meetup for the “Older, Wiser Lesbians,” or “OWLs.According to these sources, sexual encounters ranged from consensual intimacies to prostitution to brutal sexual assault. One young couple from upstate New York had been together for nearly 10 years, though you wouldn’t necessarily know it; they still looked at each other like they’d only just fallen in love that week, and I told them so. You can skip the normal-life process of slowly getting to know somebody on the shallowest of levels and get right to the good stuff.

For these Germans, gay and lesbian communities were one symbol of what they saw as the degeneration of German society. We did a lap around the upper deck before sunset, arms linked, and when we arrived back on the main deck, a big group of lesbians literally cheered, my catamaran hookup among them.The consequences of coming forward with sexual assault allegations are fraught for any sexual violence survivor. In cases where lesbians did not come into direct contact with the regime, there is little or no paper trail documenting their lives and experiences. But they were confident that they’d always love only me; with other people, they assured me, it would only ever just be sex.