Straight woman flirted with a saleswoman to get a discount on a couch 30 years ago. She regrets it.

Rebecca Morrison, an openly straight woman, describes herself as a longtime “relentless” LGBTQ+ ally. She’s marched in Pride parades, donated to LGBTQ+ nonprofits, and supported her queer family and friends. But, as she wrote earlier this year in an essay for Business Insider Netherlands, that didn’t stop the LGBTQ+ people in her life from taking her to task for once posing as queer to get a discount on an expensive piece of furniture.

“At 51 — after decades of being immersed in LGBTQ communities — I had to face my prejudices,” she wrote.

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According to Morrison, when she was in her 20s, she “flirted” with a saleswoman at an “upscale” store in Washington, D.C. Her smitten victim gave her an employee discount on a couch—which was the real object of Morrison’s desire.

Days later, when the saleswoman called to ask her out on a date, Morrison said she was busy and continued to make excuses every time the woman called her after that.

Sounds harmless enough, right? Well, Morrison’s gay bestie didn’t think so when she recounted the incident to him years later.

“I’m not saying you’re a bad person. You know I don’t think that,” he told her. “But I think you haven’t fully considered what you did back then and what it meant for her as a gay woman in America 30 years ago.”

Other queer friends agreed and accused her of something along the lines of cultural appropriation. “It wasn’t about the flirting, they said, but rather the adoption of another community’s identity for my benefit,” Morrison wrote.

“Even after all these years of fighting for LGBTQ rights, I, as a straight person, still didn’t understand the depth of what it’s like to be gay in America,” she wrote. “I needed to work harder to understand and respect LGBTQ people. I needed to keep an open conversation going with queer people to make sure their viewpoints were heard.”

Having learned her lesson, Morrison says she continues to tell the story “in hopes of starting a dialogue about the importance of truly understanding what it means to respect and fight for other communities.”

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